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Seven Dead Sisters
Alizon Grey is being driven to her death, caged in the back of a cart ready to be burned to death as a witch, and for killing her father. When the cart is attacked and she finds herself loose, we follow her journey as she tries to reach safety even as the story of her life―mistreated and the last of her siblings―is gradually revealed. Alizon has had to fight for her life before now, but this time wins all and the truth will be revealed.
74 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2022
202 people want to read
About the author
Jen Williams
30 books1,586 followersJen Williams lives in London with her partner and their small ridiculous cat. Having been a fan of grisly fairy tales from a young age, these days Jen writes dark unsettling thrillers with strong female leads, as well as character-driven fantasy novels with plenty of adventure and magic. Her debut novel, The Copper Promise, kicked off the Copper Cat trilogy in 2014, and since then she has twice won the British Fantasy Award for her second trilogy, the Winnowing Flame. Her first thriller, Dog Rose Dirt, was published with HarperCollins in July 2021. Jen has two upcoming releases in 2023: Games for Dead Girls with Harpercollins, and Talonsister with Titan. When she’s not writing books she enjoys messing about with video games and embroidery, and also works as a part-time bookseller and a freelance copywriter.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 10, 2022
Märchen sind oft auch grausam, aber Jen Williams SEVEN DEAD SISTERS stellt alle mir bekannten in den Schatten.
Alizon, die 19-jährige Erzählerin, wird in einem Karren zum Scheiterhaufen gefahren, wo sie als Hexe verbrannt werden soll. Auf dem Weg zum Platz der Hexenverbrennung rekapituliert sie das furchtbare Schicksal ihrer sechs toten Schwestern und man erfährt, warum sie verbrannt werden soll.
Die Novelle ist so brutal wie poetisch erzählt und lässt zentrale Fragen bis zum Ende unbeantwortet.
Alizon, die 19-jährige Erzählerin, wird in einem Karren zum Scheiterhaufen gefahren, wo sie als Hexe verbrannt werden soll. Auf dem Weg zum Platz der Hexenverbrennung rekapituliert sie das furchtbare Schicksal ihrer sechs toten Schwestern und man erfährt, warum sie verbrannt werden soll.
Die Novelle ist so brutal wie poetisch erzählt und lässt zentrale Fragen bis zum Ende unbeantwortet.
December 27, 2022
Rating: 3.5 stars.
This book is about how a young girl is haunted by her dead sisters, as well as by her father who killed all the sisters. It's about how the village turned a blind eye, for years, toward all the 'incidental' deaths of the girls, but when the last surviving girl kills the father, she is labelled a witch. It's about the survival of the said witch, as well as her mental destruction, as she comes to terms with the reckoning of what her dead sisters meant to her.
I really liked the storyline and the undertone of emotions, patriarchy, and the general social structure woven through the story. However the actual telling of the events left me a little confused about what was actually happening.
This book is about how a young girl is haunted by her dead sisters, as well as by her father who killed all the sisters. It's about how the village turned a blind eye, for years, toward all the 'incidental' deaths of the girls, but when the last surviving girl kills the father, she is labelled a witch. It's about the survival of the said witch, as well as her mental destruction, as she comes to terms with the reckoning of what her dead sisters meant to her.
I really liked the storyline and the undertone of emotions, patriarchy, and the general social structure woven through the story. However the actual telling of the events left me a little confused about what was actually happening.
February 28, 2023
Honestly, I thought this book had a stellar concept and great writing, but there was just so much lacking in terms of plot structure and explanation. Seven Dead Sisters definitely fell into the trap of 'Oh I want to be mysterious so I won't explicitly tell the reader anything!'
Maybe with another read-through and a closer analysis things will become clearer, but...it's a fantasy-horror novella. In my opinion, it shouldn't necessarily need to be examined with a fine-toothed comb. And the fact that it's a novella and thus shorter than a novel anyway means it's even more unsatisfying. I thought the dual timelines were a great touch, and showed how the past bled into the present for Alizon, but beyond that, there were a lot of things that lacked clarity.
First of all, the premise is that Alizon is on her way to be executed for murdering her father. Her father, however, killed her seven sisters over the course of some years. It's a haunting premise, but it didn't really hold much water the more I thought about it. Yes, domestic abuse was absolutely overlooked back then. Yes, the scenario in which her father drowned a newborn baby in a bucket definitely happened in those times. But drowning a newborn baby is not the same as disappearing all those older children. Was there absolutely no level of social scrutiny in that village?? I realize it's set in a medieval time, but if a man has seven children and they all die/disappear under mysterious circumstances and are never buried in proper graves on church ground...I mean...surely someone would've been suspicious. Yes, women were undervalued and patriarchal violence was rife, but you're telling me no one questioned the slow disappearance of every single one of this man's progeny? In a small, presumably close-knit community? They weren't just turning a blind eye to physical/sexual abuse, they just kind of ignored the fact that this guy killed all his kids.
As for the supernatural aspects of things, that's where everything got much more confusing. Since Alizon's father buried her sisters in the woods, I had the thought that her sisters were blood sacrifices of some sort? Again, this could've used a lot of clarity. And when she met the Queen of the Faeries, the Queen implied that she was somehow responsible for the death of her sisters since she was the only one left alive. The Queen said '"You asked us for a boon and so, you went hungry, but you never starved. Your father was hungry too, but again and again his eye passed over you. You grew up safe and tall and strong, in the shadow of a monster we hid you from."'
The way she referenced the 'hunger' and the 'seasons of meat that came from nowhere', I wondered if she was referring to cannibalism. Had Alizon's father killed a daughter when times were hard, just to feed the other daughters? But I got the sense that the hunger and the meat were meant in a metaphorical way. And, the (badly executed) twist at the end was that Alizon had smothered her ailing mother with a pillow out of mercy, so she had a taste for killing too, just like her monstrous father.
Ugh. I know faeries have odd interpretations of human actions and morals, but come the hell on.
Maybe with another read-through and a closer analysis things will become clearer, but...it's a fantasy-horror novella. In my opinion, it shouldn't necessarily need to be examined with a fine-toothed comb. And the fact that it's a novella and thus shorter than a novel anyway means it's even more unsatisfying. I thought the dual timelines were a great touch, and showed how the past bled into the present for Alizon, but beyond that, there were a lot of things that lacked clarity.
First of all, the premise is that Alizon is on her way to be executed for murdering her father. Her father, however, killed her seven sisters over the course of some years. It's a haunting premise, but it didn't really hold much water the more I thought about it. Yes, domestic abuse was absolutely overlooked back then. Yes, the scenario in which her father drowned a newborn baby in a bucket definitely happened in those times. But drowning a newborn baby is not the same as disappearing all those older children. Was there absolutely no level of social scrutiny in that village?? I realize it's set in a medieval time, but if a man has seven children and they all die/disappear under mysterious circumstances and are never buried in proper graves on church ground...I mean...surely someone would've been suspicious. Yes, women were undervalued and patriarchal violence was rife, but you're telling me no one questioned the slow disappearance of every single one of this man's progeny? In a small, presumably close-knit community? They weren't just turning a blind eye to physical/sexual abuse, they just kind of ignored the fact that this guy killed all his kids.
As for the supernatural aspects of things, that's where everything got much more confusing. Since Alizon's father buried her sisters in the woods, I had the thought that her sisters were blood sacrifices of some sort? Again, this could've used a lot of clarity. And when she met the Queen of the Faeries, the Queen implied that she was somehow responsible for the death of her sisters since she was the only one left alive. The Queen said '"You asked us for a boon and so, you went hungry, but you never starved. Your father was hungry too, but again and again his eye passed over you. You grew up safe and tall and strong, in the shadow of a monster we hid you from."'
The way she referenced the 'hunger' and the 'seasons of meat that came from nowhere', I wondered if she was referring to cannibalism. Had Alizon's father killed a daughter when times were hard, just to feed the other daughters? But I got the sense that the hunger and the meat were meant in a metaphorical way. And, the (badly executed) twist at the end was that Alizon had smothered her ailing mother with a pillow out of mercy, so she had a taste for killing too, just like her monstrous father.
Ugh. I know faeries have odd interpretations of human actions and morals, but come the hell on.
October 10, 2023
Good, wierd and strange and what an exceptional ending twisting stuff.
June 18, 2022
An excellent intelligent dark folk tale exploring guilt and who gets judged for their crimes. A trip into the forest contains all kinds of monsters. A gorgeous tale
Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
November 30, 2023
A 75 page novella by well fantasy-turned-thriller author Jen Williams. Always hard to review something of this length without revealing too much but I think that calling it a gruesome fairy tale as fairy tales were meant to be would give you a good idea of what to expect. It builds slowly and inexorably to a shocking finale as a good horror fiction should. For my money most horror fiction works best in novella form and this is a superb example of how it should be done. Yes there is some graphic detail but never dwelt on. It is the heart and mind and experiences of our main protag that are the true horror. Creepy stuff!
July 24, 2022
This was a very creepy tiny story. Set around fae and folklore and human sacrifice. I had no idea going in but the wood setting, the dissapearing of sisters and our main character being accused of witchcraft on her way to the pire makes for a thrilling page turner!!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews