Strong Until It Starts to Rot: Motheater by Linda H. Codega

Posted 16th January 2025 by Sia in Fantasy Reviews, Queer Lit, Reviews / 0 Comments

Motheater by Linda H. Codega
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black bisexual MC, sapphic MC, F/F, minor gay character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 21st January 2025
ISBN: 1645661814
Goodreads
two-half-stars

In this nuanced queer fantasy set amid the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, the last witch of the Ridge must choose sides in a clash between industry and nature.

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it’s right—but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs.

Instead, she brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can’t remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she’s a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in her hands and Scripture on her tongue. But the mystery of her fate, her doomed quest to keep industry off Kire Mountain, and the promises she bent and broke have followed her a century and half into the future. And now, the choices Motheater and Bennie make together could change the face of the town itself.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~calm down mr bluejay
~magic vs mining
~don’t mess with a Neighbor

This book made me feel extremely autistic.

Not at first. The first half, maybe even the first two-thirds, are incredibly strong – and the prose is absolutely lovely throughout. I have never visited Appalachia, but Codega’s writing is rich and atmospheric, and the setting is – pretty literally! – a character in its own right. And the fact that none of our main characters are uncomplicatedly Nice/Good People? *chef’s kiss* Magnificent, and much approved!

“Faith’s only part of it. There’s more fire in me than blood. You pull on my red-string it’s liable to lead you to Old Scratch himself. You want to be a witch?” Motheater hissed, eyes wide. “For magic, you have to tie yourself to something greater, to a baptism. You bind yourself to power, an old creature, an ancient thing; the Witch-Father, the Devil’s Wife, the Moon Raker, the Drunken Child, the Last Bride. The old witches, the nightly powers. Then you give, and they give back.”

…But.

Look: it is possible that I was just being Extremely Autistic, and missing the obvious. But it sure felt like, the closer we got to the final pages, the more characters were suddenly changing long-held views without any warning – or, worse, any explanation. I could not figure out, even after combing back over what I’d read, when, or why, Esther decided the mining company coming into town might not be a bad thing. There seemed no groundwork laid for Motheater deciding she was the cause of the problem; she just abruptly comes to the conclusion that everything is her fault, actually, and I couldn’t figure out her reasoning. The (magical?) bond between Bennie and Motheater comes out of nowhere; it just seems to appear, suddenly, not grow over time. Bennie’s Intense Aversion to the whole scene with the tree was utterly baffling: I didn’t understand at all what was going on, when she’d been so into and excited by magic just the day before. Everything Esther did was for Kiron, until suddenly the book was all ‘she hasn’t been looking after Kiron at all actually, major fail!’ Despite previously deciding that Zach is more than culpable in nearly killing Motheater (actually killing her, as far as he knew) she goes back to thinking he’s a paragon later, apparently forgetting all her anger and disgust with him.

I just. What?

The moths were a Milky Way above them, soft silverine stars dotting the ceiling.

The characters aren’t the only thing that stopped making sense. I have no problem with soft magic systems – I love them! – but this one was contradictory. Literally: on one page Esther cannot cast a spell, isn’t able to, but then does it anyway a page later in the same scene. You become a Neighbor (a badass, extremely hardcore Appalachian witch) by making a bargain…but at one point Character A is made into a witch by Character B, which, how??? What??? Character C tells Motheater off for not tending to the souls, but then it’s revealed that Character C has been gathering them this whole time? What’s the problem then?

Hopefully some of that got fixed in copyedits – I did read an arc, after all, not a finished copy – but it was majorly frustrating.

The use of biblical quotes for Esther’s magic – for Appalachian magic in general – is something I’ve come across before, and I think was done really well here! And to be clear, the magic very much felt like magic, which I appreciated. I liked how wild and strange it felt, how earthy it was. But when so much of the plot rested on it…it did get frustrating, having no concept of where the limits were, what was and wasn’t possible. Nothing about it was really explained – Kire, the local mountain, is alive and sentient (in its way), and so are at least some trees, and some animals at least some of the time? I would have really liked to learn more about the framework of Esther’s magic; not the mechanics, but who or what the spirits are that she references sometimes, why she can do this but not that, how can this fucker over here use magic too? What’s the belief system, here?

The romance never convinced me. That Bennie was in awe of this powerful witch’s powerful power? Yep, got that, very convincing, and I can’t blame her because I was impressed too. And I could sort of see Bennie crushing hard on this woman. But it felt entirely one-sided to me, not reciprocal at all. I never got the sense that Motheater returned Bennie’s attraction; I never even got the sense that Motheater was queer until suddenly she was in love with Bennie, with apparently no buildup. Had she been in love with women before Bennie, did she already know she was queer? Either way, when did she start to fall for Bennie? She seemed to treat Bennie more like an assistant than an equal, never mind a romantic partner.

There were quite a lot of writerly decisions that I didn’t like. Bennie, a Black woman, playing pretty useless sidekick to the white, powerful Motheater, for one: she had very little to contribute to what they were doing, so that she felt like a side-character even when we were in her POV. The way the ending fell out, for another; wow did I dislike that. But there were also a lot of word choices that made me want to tear my hair out: for instance, at one point, Codega writes ‘warp and woof’ – which, hi, virtually none of your readers are going to know that woof is a technical, historical term for ‘weft’! Which means you using it there is just going to make us think of dogs! Or the insistence of using the word ‘cleavage’ to describe rocky surfaces, which PAINFULLY undermines the dramatic showdown with the sentient mountain in the climax! Come on.

The very worst, though, is the choice of the Big Bad, which I remain utterly confused about. It’s not much of a spoiler: although Bennie starts the book looking to shut down the mining company, which she believes is responsible for the deaths in the mines, by the halfway point everyone is very clear on Kire, the mountain, being the monster who needs to be stopped.

Whatever White Rock was doing couldn’t compare to what Kire threatened. White Rock’s miners disappeared in ones and twos. If Kire woke up, it could destroy the entire operation. Hundreds of White Rock’s miners, killed all at once, lost to an Appalachian appetite.

Some lip-service is paid to the idea that Kire’s anger at being mined is justified, but fundemantally, this is a book about Appalachian mining that decides the environment is the problem.

Play that back: we’re talking about mining. Mining coal, specifically. In rural, poor, Appalachia. And instead of the aggressive, indifferent-to-life, greedy, destructive mining companies being the issue…it’s the environment itself.

…That sure is a Choice That Was Made. One that seems extra wtf with the climate crisis going on outside.

To be clear, Motheater isn’t pro-mining companies or anything. I don’t think Codega intends for the book to be read that way. I’m just not sure how else I’m supposed to take it, when the monster that needs slaying is the mountain instead of the corporates. Did nobody in the editing process think that was a weird narrative decision??? Nobody???

Motheater’s short lashes, her cheekbones like chopped crystal, stunning like a mountain ridge.

I don’t know. The first half of this book was beautiful. I didn’t enjoy the last third at all. The ending wasn’t what I wanted; the Big Bad was definitely not what I wanted. I’d be willing to try another book from Codega in the future. But this one, I am, reluctantly, not a fan of.

Trigger warning: fairly graphic animal sacrifice

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