#human rites

Children’s Just Like Queen Esther by Ari Moffic and Kerry Olitzky (text) and Rena Yehuda Newman (illustration) Atara loves to wear her crown – to the library, to the dentist, even to her swim lessons. It gives her confidence, and shows the world that she is a girl, not a boy, like everyone thought at first. But when Atara reads the story of Queen Esther, on the Jewish holiday of Purim – she…

read in 2025: series completed!

The Art of Legend

Holy Terrors

One Morning Sun

Ravenguard

The Wild Robot Escapes / The Wild Robot Protects

Emberclaw

The Antlered King

Drowned Country

Rising Ashes

A Ruin Great and Free

This Ends in Embers

Human Rites

✨ BOOK REVIEW ✨

Human Rites by Juno Dawson

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

QOTD: What was your last five star read? Or one you anticipate will be 5 stars?

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With her last book, Juno Dawson left us with some truly gnarly cliffhangers. Now, in Human Rites, the conclusion to the Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series, readers won’t be too surprised to hear that there are only more twists coming their way. But they’ll have a ball of a time getting there.

This rollicking fantasy series in which the enemies are in so many ways personified hate and fear, transphobia and misogyny, comes to a close. The daughters of Gaia—Elle, Ciara, Leonie, and, yes, Niamh—must prepare to face Satanis himself. And Theo has to make a choice: succumb to the temptations of Lucifer and fulfill the Sullied Child prophecy or watch everyone she cares about die. I knew I’d enjoy this final volume, because Dawson has reeled me in deeply with all of these characters. And it didn’t disappoint. It’s witty, with some truly wild surprises, and emotional too. I finished it with that big feeling in your chest you get at the end of a well-written story. It all ends up like we sort of thought it would, in a devastating final battle and an attempt to rewrite fate, but I dare any reader to guess how we get there.

So if you’ve loved this series, the finale is out July 1. If you haven’t read it, but are interested in the story of a coven of real-feeling, complex witches, many of them queer, all of them bold, and all connected by a deep childhood bond, battling transphobia, misogyny, and other such nonsense, I highly recommend you try out this wonderful trilogy.

Finished Human Rites yesterday. Read half of the book in one sitting.

I really liked it. It was almost as good as the first novel, but I might just like Her Majesty's Royal Coven more since I listened to the audiobook and Aoife McMahon did such a good job narrating it.

I can now definitely say that my problem with the second novel was the group splitting up and Ciara's POV being so dominant. Human Rites fixes that. The focus is very much on the main characters working best as a group and in this book they all get more or less equal POVs.

I will still say that I could have done without some of the POVs. I think, some of the characters get exactly one short chapter in their POV and it's not adding much to the story.

What carried over from the second book are those conflicts that could have been resolved with a simple conversation. It wasn't as prevalent in this book, but it was still their occasionally and it just annoyed me. At least in The Shadow Cabinet, there was reason for Ciara and Theo not communication properly. But now it's Theo and Niamh not communicating and that just doesn't make much sense.

All in all it was ⭐⭐⭐⭐ star read for me. Some things could have been improved, but it was still a delight to read and it captivated me from beginning to end.