The Familiar is an atmospheric historical fantasy set in the late 1500s Spain, when the Inquisition was up and running at full power. Our heroine is Luzia Cotado, a scullion in the house of a poor noble family who uses small ancestral magics taught to her by her secretly Jewish family to get through the day: unburning burnt bread, multiplying the potatoes when there wasn’t enough coin at market, heating water, fixing a seam. The plot kicks off when Luzia’s mistress, Doña Valentina, catches her at […]
“She would build herself a life of plenty. She would force her world to bloom as she’d made the pomegranate tree grow, and Santángel would help her do it. Even if blood watered the soil.”
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
