Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc!

Really neat weird little story! I enjoyed the setting and the allegory to nature fighting back, plus it was a little spooky and witchy which I love.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of Motheater by Linda H. Codega before publication on Jan 2025.
This was a well-written story moving back and forth between timelines I didn't get confused and was easy to follow. It started strong but the ending seemed it was very rushed for me. The Characters don't rise to the occasion for me. A witch Vs Industry across two different timelines with a dash of queer romance.

The small-town, Appalachian setting for this novel was absolutely beautiful (to a city girl like me) and the premise of the witch who gets pulled out of the mountain after 150-odd long years fighting the mining industry made for a fantastic allegory for environmental justice. This then becomes further enhanced in a very literal way as the mountain fights back and turns into a horror trope kind of ending, with a physical beast that I really enjoyed! The characters are unique and I felt like I had a personal stake in the lives of each of the main four. However it did feel a bit icky that a white person whose niche is in queer media and has nothing about ethnicity studies/speciality on their website decided to write a Black main character?

Now, I'm calling Bennie the MC because she's the perspective we're fed the majority of the story through, and Motheater is mostly understood through Bennie's own understandings. However it went a little too far for me when they wrote in a scene where she was fearful of a cop for the obvious racial difference - and I just want to say that while white people can understand fear of authorities for a variety of reasons, race will never be one of them and it feels like taking away a voice from a Black person to attempt to replicate this. But the worst part for me was that the entire thing was a non-event, the reason the cop spoke to her went away immediately, and it had so little bearing on the story that literally nothing would change and no references anywhere else would even need to be taken out, just this one scene, which to me says it was gratuitous and self-serving "anti-racism".

On top of this, we've all heard about the ugly stereotype of the Black person whose story purely serves to uplift and further the white person's? Well, that's what this book did. Self-sacrificing Bennie worked the entire book to help others, free her town, aid Motheater's path to redeeming herself and her version of the town from so many years ago, and Bennie, sadly, worked to see her town saved through uplifting the white character.

Disclaimer: I did also consult another source, a Black person, before I shared these thoughts to ensure I wasn't speaking for the Black community etc.

I love a weird little book set in Appalachia and boy does this deliver! The setting was amazing, the writing and pacing were intentional and thoughtful and I just overall really liked this!

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

As someone who loves D&D and who has been a passionate reader of io9 since before Charlie Jane Anders left, I was very impressed by the writing of Linda H. Codega. I really enjoyed their articles about the OGL fiasco and I thought their reporting was top notch and their writing style was clear and enjoyable.

So I was very excited when their first novel was previewed in io9 and even more excited when I got an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher.

This novel was interesting. Like I’ve said about the novels of Chuck Tingle and Stephen King, I think I would very much enjoy a novel by Linda Codega that didn’t have genre elements.

The book starts with Bennie, a woman who moved to a mining town in Appalachia with her boyfriend, got a job at the mining company, and made a best friend there with whom she was looking into suspicious mining deaths. But then her friend was killed in some sort of mining incident and in the aftermath she then broke up with her boyfriend and was living on the fringe of poverty while trying to figure out a way to take the mining company down. At this point the story begins when she finds Motheater, a witch who had been trapped in the mountain for 150+ years. This fascinating setup is undermined by alternating chapters with Motheater’s perspective from before she was stuck into the mountain. I was bored by these flashback chapters and I felt they added very little to the overall narrative. Furthermore, the book doesn’t really mine the time traveling culture shock or the realization that magic is real very well. There are token attempts but they feel halfhearted at best.

In addition, I was disappointed that Bennie never got justice for her best friend or all of the other dead miners and that part of the driving of the plot was abandoned without much explanation. Furthermore, the explicit tying in of the magic to Christianity was quite offputting to me (and presumably will be to many other non-Christian readers).

But when this book worked, it worked. The language was often lyrical. The blue jay familiar was a joy. I look forward to Linda Codega’s next book.

I really enjoyed this book and loved the new and fresh setting it provided. At times the book was a little confusing but the story still kept me hooked throughout.

Beautifully written in Appalachian gothic themes. Felt it dragging on in certain points with the writing style, but the story itself was engaging and enough to keep me interested.

The writing in this book was rich and beautiful, with strong folk horror and witchy vibes. The story will definitely call to people who enjoy nature. As someone who couldn't be any less religious, the presence of Christian scripture within Motheater's magic was unexpectedly interesting to me as well.

I have always found Appalachia fascinating. I've heard many myths and urban legends, and I have seen the most breathtaking pictures. It's the type of place where I imagine magic must feel very real and present. I think it worked perfectly for the setting of this story.

The plot in this book was a very interesting reflection on the dangers of modernity and industrialisation, especially when they don't take nature and the old ways into account. Evolution doesn't have to be bad; however, we must never forget our connection to the earth or get lost in the allure of money.

Not a BAD read. I liked the concept. A nuanced little Appalachian fantasy/horror, with a black female MC, sapphic romance, folkloric/mythical (Titans! 😍) vibes and themes of nature vs. industry, sustainability vs. progress, and corporate greed leading to willful negligence. The main thing I enjoyed was Motheater's moral dilemma re: her duty to protect the environment vs. the economically vulnerable people of Kiron, who'd have no livelihood without mining Kire.

But, too much about the execution didn't work for me:

• The multi-POV, dual-timeline structure was ill-suited to the story. Who IS Motheater? What's her real name? Her backstory? Well, the past timeline is from the POV of a witch called 'Ester', so no big ?, there.

• More widely, it gives stuff away too soon. Who killed Motheater? The FIRST person suggested. Why? For the reason Motheater assumes.

• Codega's use of (both historical/modern-day) Appalacian dialects was inaccessible. I can't determine accuracy/authenticity, AT ALL, because I'd find a word used in a weird context, look up the meaning in Appalacian English, and find nothing? I finished the book not having understood entire sentences. What's this 'efficiency' that keeps being 'stepped into' or 'closing in' on people?!

• Bogged down by scripture. Overall, it's hard to read.

• Motheater's kinda baffling? E.g., someone answers the door to her and says, 'Who calls?' and she's LIVID? And, I'm meant to get why?!

• Repetitive! Bennie keeps 'realising' the SAME things about her attraction to Motheater, in the SAME language, over and over. Felt like I was going crazy.

I can see this being a hit with the right people. Just didn't do it for me. 😬

This story was dark & very atmospheric. Set in a mining town in Appalachia, we follow Bennie, who is freshly out of a relationship and lost her job. She finds a woman unconscious near a river and decides to get her some help. I won't say much more as to not spoil anything. This is definitely a slow burn and I enjoyed the journey. Thank you to NetGalley & Erewhon Books/Kensington Publishing for the ARC. This book publishes January 21, 2025.

This was a really interesting and immediately captivating southern gothic. I really loved motheater and the way she is characterized. The prose is also quite beautiful. I would have liked more conversation around the idea of being tied to the land, however. In a place like appalachia with its history of Indigenous expulsion and genocide, it felt strange for this to be left out of the conversation. How is it that motheater, a white witch descended from colonizers comes to have this connection with the land?

Full disclosure, was unable to finish Motheater before my download expired.
I was excited about this one - a queer Appalachian fantasy? As someone who grew up in Kentucky, it sounded right up my alley. Motheater started promisingly, with an interesting hook in Motheater and atmospheric prose. But I had some trouble connecting with the characters and story, leading to my slow reading pace. I am curious to finish this book once it is released.

I wanted to like this one so badly but it fell short for me and caused me to DNF it just before the download expired. On the one had, it does have a very quick start, is very atmospheric and gives homage to the area near/in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (one of my favorite places on Earth). However, the dual timeline set up was hard for me to keep up with because of the writing not grabbing me and pulling me in from the start. The one of our main characters obsession and crime board in her apartment through me off a bit as I was going into this expecting more of a fantasy novel and a little less crime/magical realism kind of thing which is completely on me! I will say the story did have potential so I would still recommend it to others if for no other reasons than the natural setting and the intriguing 'Motheater".

Motheater was not what I was expecting in the slightest. There's a lot I enjoyed about it and some things I didn't.

To start, I wouldn't have classed this as a fantasy. It reads as a lyrical literary fiction with hints of folk horror and fantasy. Which i appreciate. The prose was great, and as a sucker for religious folklore, I really enjoyed the mixing of Christian scripture with pagan witchery.

I loved the setting and the characters, both Bennie and Motheater were interesting, although all bits of Motheater POV were set in the past, it was enough to give us a good understanding of who she is. The Appalachian mountains were a perfect scenario for this tale, and the text was burst full of history about the area and its mining past.
A couple of things that didn't really tickle my fancy were for one, the sheer number of times the word "Motheater" was on the page. It was so many times it kind of lost its meaning. I don't know if this was on purpose, but if it was, I don't really understand why. Another thing that didn't flow as I expected was the romance aspect. While for Bennie, it all made sense as we had her POV set in the present, for Motheater to reciprocate her feelings felt a bit out of the blue, and it just didn't quite fit. A shame, really.

Lastly, I regret to say that the ending wasn't for me either. There was no satisfaction factor at all in it, no great climax on the setting that was put forward. The elements of female rage and the perpetual battle between capitalist progress and nature fell flat with a less than compelling ending.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable reading, and the prose was just the way I like, and I would recommend it to people who like a folk tale and badass women.

Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really need to stop getting inspired to check out books on Bookstagram and Booktok because they usually don't work for me. I was expecting Appalachian environmental activism, anti-corporatism, a slower pace and hedge witch magic with with queer rural fantasy.

I did enjoy the dynamic between Bennie and Motheater; their pairing had some sweet moments, but don't expect a romance. The pacing was glacial, which I don't really see as a literary style- there wasn't much interiority or character development, or focus on relationships, which I usually expect from litfic.

I also found the time jumps between POVs confusing especially given ghosts and seances.

The magic system was also confusing to me and strangely Pentacostal-based, which I didn't care for. I also tend to prefer witches in covens with found family rather than grumpy witches who hide away in the woods and still expect to change hearts and minds. I did like the parallels between Bennie's and Motheater's quests to destroy the mining company. Though I felt the author was a little too in love with Motheater's name.

This didn't work for me but in general the prose was beautiful and if you're looking for a queer Appalachian buddy witch anti-capitalist drama this will be more the book for you than for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Ugh. I had to DNF this around 30%. I was intrigued by the synopsis but I guess I read it too fast because I didn't realize this is a white author writing a black FMC. I know there are two very strong sides to the argument of whether or not that is ok, and both schools of thought make good points. Personally, it is icky to me and I could not get past it. It just felt off. Judging by the other reviews, race relations take up a small part of the overall theme and message of the book (environmentalism and queer love at the forefront) which is even more reason that the author should have just stuck with writing what she knows. A black reader on Goodreads wrote the following, "Bennie's hair and her being Black in a small white town. As a Black woman in America, I could tell the author wasn’t Black from the jump. The half-assed social commentary about living in a predominantly white town, her interactions with the cops, and the weird mentions of her hair going from seemingly standard month-old braids to microbraids (in the span of a day or two, mind you) was a red flag. The kicker was when she called her microbraids (which felt so strange that she kept specifying them) a weave! I was completely floored. How is she gonna have a sew-in and microbraids at the same time???? LOL. The worst part was when she was taking out MICROBRAIDS in only an hour BY HERSELF. I wish I had that power. Don’t get me started on how she picked out and brushed her hair completely dry. Not a single drop of water in sight. The whole scene just pissed me off. Honestly felt more disrespectful than any of the other questionable commentary." which validated the feeling in my gut that I should stop reading. Out of respect for the author and her debut novel, I will not be posting this review publicly online. Thank you for the opportunity to read!

after a disasterous coal mining accident, Bennie with a heavy heart investigates when really was going on in the mines. She finds a mganificent stranger in the tunnels that is to believed to know the truth. All is uncertain with a witch from the Appalachia, but Bennie is determined to find the truth.

I will always appreciate a good Appalachian fantasy / horror but this felt too similar to the vibes of Andrew Joseph White in a way That just didn't seem to deliver. I got from it the vibes of anti-corporation in compound fracture but also the religious scripture of hell followed with us, although I felt too bogged down by the religious scripture tying into the witch vibes part and the pacing of it all really made it hard to slog through. I also wasn't really convinced by the relationship between Bennie and moth eater as it felt like Bennie more admired her for her powers than loved her. The story was all over the place and a lot of plot points were dropped in favor of more mundane boring plot points that were less plot and more just filler. The writing was beautiful but really hard to get into.

Thanks NetGalley for providing me with an ARC!

Well, that was truly something. I got hooked on this book from day one. You’re telling me there’s a queer book with the plot based in mysterious Appalachian mountains and there are a lot of moths?? I’ve got to get my hands on this one.

Bennie - a young black woman in the small Appalachian town is intent on finding out what’s going on with the local mines and countless people that lost their lives in there. She wasn’t ready for what she was to find out. Mysterious woman who’s out of this world and surely out of these times, familiar blue jay, old stories of pain, corruption and magic. Is she ready to fight something ancient, way stronger, than what she will ever be. Who will she become on this journey, and what loses is she willing to take?

From the first page, you can tell this book is unique, the language is mesmerizing and magical, which is maybe why I had so much trouble getting through this book. While I love the mysterious and enchanting vibe Motheater gives, the language in some parts was slowing down the general pace. Maybe it’s just my English that got a bit rusty, or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for a book like that, but I couldn’t get myself lost in this story. I absolutely love the concept, but I'm slightly disappointed in the execution. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a spectacular take on magic, mystery and all of that intertwined with folklore vibes, but the characters just seem so bland. We have the Motheater (god save me from how many times her name was repeated on each page), who’s surely the star of the show. She has meticulously planned backstory, depth and, let’s be honest, she’s kinda hot. Come on, guys, she does magic and has snake tattoos. Bennie falls a little flat compared to her. All she does is cry about deaths in the mines and about how whipped she’s for Motheater. Ah, yeah, also her main personality trait is being annoyed with her ex-boyfriend.

Was it a bad book? Definitely no. Was I swooped from my feet by it? Unfortunately, also no. Maybe it just wasn’t something for me, but I still think this book is unique enough to give it a try.

Motheater by Linda H. Codega is a uniquely atmospheric read that immerses you in the dark heart of Appalachia. I believe that readers from the South, particularly those familiar with its mountains, will resonate most deeply with its themes. After reading various reviews, I was struck by how misunderstood this book seems to be. Having grown up in the South and spent significant time in the Appalachian region, I feel a personal connection to the story that those unfamiliar with the area may lack.

Codega beautifully captures the essence of small-town Appalachia, exploring generational trauma and the pervasive influence of biblical scripture. As someone who isn’t particularly religious, I usually shy away from scripture in literature, but here it felt integral to the narrative.

The dual perspectives and intertwining timelines added depth to the story, particularly in uncovering the origins of the curse that binds Motheater to the mountain. I was reminded of the podcast Old Gods of Appalachia, which also evokes similar themes of folklore and myth. Kire, as a Titan awakened after enduring centuries of torment from mining, offers a compelling angle for revenge that enriches the plot.

While the queer love story between Bennie and Motheater is a subtle thread within the narrative, it’s beautifully woven throughout. Some reviewers felt it was rushed, but I found the moments of connection—like waking up intertwined each morning—were delicately portrayed. The fact that witches aren’t typically defined by strict sexual orientations adds another layer of authenticity to their relationship.

If you’re searching for a witchy, dual-timeline narrative rooted in Appalachian culture that balances excitement with a slow burn, Motheater is the perfect choice. Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the ARC of this novel.