Review by Jennifer Stevenson: It’s been a long, long time since my witchy days, but these three novellas bring it all back like riding a bicycle. At least, the parts where the gang are clowning, cooking, squabbling, doing friend stuff, and having personal drama.

Tales from Rugosa Coven by Sarah Avery is an antidote to the angsty romantasy universe of blood feuds between immortal haters. These are witches you can relate to, with problems they can solve, kinda. Nobody you know dies.

Bonus: None of them is in menopause. (I never thought I’d say that in a review.)

In fact, these feel like real witches with a strong coven of some years’ standing. They get business done. They cook and argue and do their totally non-magickkkal laundry. And they’re kind to each other. You could say that kindness is their thing.

Tales from Rugosa Coven does not do so many annoying things. Nobody’s fifteen (or fifty) and clueless. Avery skips the whole “origins story” thing, which all too often by the third volume tends to swamp the interesting parts in Marvel-sized Shiny Army Versus Ugly Army apocalypses, with one small boy or menopausal witch attaining godhood by the end and shoving all the other characters aside. The human factor is never overshadowed by special effects. No gods or monsters talk shop over tea and so doing erase the heroism of our protagonists.

Oh, and nobody’s cat talks.

The Rugosa Coven witches have real-coven stuff. They come together from different traditions under the Big Top umbrella that is modern occult group practice. This makes for very diverse problems, from having to argue a case in front of Anubis to rescuing stranded mermen. They suffer the usual coven wrangling about how to call the quarters. These witches solve their problems with the strength of their differences tempered by patience, decency, friendship, and good will.

What a nice idea.

Their problems, also, feel like ordinary people stuff. What do you do when your parents die and you find out they were hoarders? Ordinary. And then you find all their friends are hoarders? Less ordinary. And the dead parents send nagging post-it notes promising revelations to come? Wait, what’s going on?

Whatever their differences, Rugosa Coven comes together every time to do what real witches do. Most of the time that is to figure things out, or maybe just to witness.

Active witnessing is hard, hard work. We all know what it’s like to do this, when someone we love turns weird.

This collection of three novellas originally appeared from Dark Quest in 2013 and won the Mythopoeic Award in 2015.  It has been revised by the author and is being republished by Candlemark & Gleam under the leadership of SFF legend Melissa Scott.

Charming, engrossing, authentic, highly recommended.

(Candlemark & Gleam, coming August 2026)

JENNIFER STEVENSON‘S BIOGRAPHY. Every now and then I write something witchy. My first effort was Trash Sex Magic, shortlisted two years running for the Nebula and the Locus Award about trailer trash sex magicians and a tree who used to be a man and is now a god. When the tree is cut down and killed by real estate developers, sex miracles begin to spray all over the landscape. Our heroine has four days to find someone to take his place. You can still get it in ebook from Small Beer Press.