Wooing (and Being Wooed by) the Witch Queen with Stephanie Burgis
Author: Stephanie Burgis
Publication Date: February 18, 2025
Genres: Fantasy | Romantasy
Representation: Bisexual
Wooing the Witch Queen is, in a word, marvelous. If you’ll allow me a few others, I’ll add magnificent and magical, brilliant and beautiful, and stunning and sensual. Honestly, I have not enjoyed a book like this so much since His Secret Illuminations – and for many of the same reasons.
What Stephanie Burgis has written here is a slow-burn, cozy, and yet high-stakes fantasy romance that is deliciously surprising in so many ways. The Queens of Villainy are the heroes, the monsters (especially the goblins) are cute, and the protagonist is a cinnamon roll of a boyfriend who does a really bad job of pretending to be a dark wizard.
Felix (Fabian) is the kind of protagonist with whom I identify wholeheartedly, and his gender-role-swapped relationship with Saskia makes me feel seen. He’s kind, bookish, good-natured, and loyal, but there’s a hidden strength behind his resilience. Utterly smitten with the Queen, who is the lead in their relationship, Fabian throws himself into a world of magic he knows nothing about and risks both his safety and his freedom to keep her safe. As for Saskia, she is a good woman with a dark reputation and a backstory as tragic as Felix’s. Confidently and openly bisexual, she’s still navigating the fallout of one relationship while easing her way into another. She’s angry and stressed and frustrated, beset by challenges on all sides, but in Felix she finds a safe outlet for her heart.
Morlokk, Mrs. Haglitz, Krakk, the goblins, and the crows are perhaps the oddest found family you’ll ever come across in fantasy, and yet they’re absolutely endearing. It was they who made Saskia’s dark castle a home, and they who make Felix feel welcome. The other Queens of Villainy (Lorelei and Ailana) are more complex characters, women of incredible strength and worrying flaws, and I’m looking forward to getting to know more about them as the series continues.
Wooing the Witch Queen is beautifully written, a breeze of a book that begs to be savored, and I enjoyed it immensely. There’s magic aplenty, books aplenty, and even some mythology that you’d best pay attention to, because it’ll become important by the end. I cannot recommend this highly enough, and as soon as Enchanting the Fae Queen is released, I’ll be first in line to follow Lorelei’s tale.
Rating: 
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
