I really loved the strong woman characters in Her Majesty's Witch. Aside from Bayla, my personal favorite was Queen Victoria, who is an important figure in the storyline. Eva Gordon portrays this monarch as being unyielding in a crisis. She totally refused to cooperate with the villain. The twin YA inventors, Flora and Fauna were engaging. I was also glad to see Rosaline Channing in Her Majesty's Witch. She is an independent minded werewolf who is introduced in the first book.
Speaking of werewolves, I normally avoid books dealing with them. I discuss my reasons in my review of Wolf by Alma Alexander here. Yet when I was reading Her Majesty's Witch, it occurred to me for the first time that the portrayals of werewolves that I consider most objectionable were showing them behaving as if they were wolves with rabies. A healthy wolf who isn't infected with rabies would never feel compelled to attack humans. This is a slander against wolves. Real wolves avoid humans. They only attack humans in self-defense or in the defense of their families. I feel indebted to Eva Gordon for allowing me to have a significant aha moment about a prejudice that appears so often in fiction about werewolves.
In this book, Bayla and her golem husband face a villain with an apocalyptic plan. I don't consider this a strength of the novel. It seems to me that this has been a common trope in fantasy and science fiction ever since Joss Whedon devalued the apocalypse by having his heroes averting it routinely in his popular Buffy and Angel series. (For more of my perspective on Joss Whedon's work, see my review of the scholarly essay anthology Reading Joss Whedon here.) This theme loses impact when it's overused.
Nevertheless, my affection for established and new characters left me feeling satisfied with Her Majesty's Witch. There hasn't been a third Bayla novel. I would like to encourage Eva Gordon to write more about this set of characters. There are numerous possibilities that she could pursue.
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