Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

2020

Publication

Titan Books, 2020.

Collection

Owned Fiction

Series

The Elemental Masters (16)

Status

Available

Description

"Anna May Jones is the daughter of a coal miner, but a sickly constitution has kept her confined to the house for most of her life. Hoping to improve her daughter's health - and lessen the burden on their family - Anna's mother sends her to live with her Aunt Jinny, a witchy-woman and an Elemental Master, in a holler outside of Ducktown. As she settles into her new life, Anna learns new skills at Aunt Jinny's side and discovers that she, too, has a gift for Elemental magic that Jinny calls 'the Glory'. She also receives lessons from a mysterious and bewitching woman named Jolene, who assures her that, with time, Anna could become even more powerful than her aunt. But with Anna's increasing power comes increasing notice. Billie McDaran, the foreman of the Ducktown mine, begins to take an interest in Anna and her abilities - even though Anna has already fallen in love with a young man with a talent for stonecarving. If she wants to preserve the life she has come to love, Anna must use her newfound powers to oppose the foreman and protect those around her."--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member MarthaJeanne

Doesn't really fit in the series, but probably harder to follow if you don't know the series.

It really bothered me that she used y'all as a singular pronoun.

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LibraryThing member quondame

The Elemental Master's books range from quite good to really bad. This entry which is a confabulation of the Dolly Parton song grafted onto the Queen of Copper Mountain, set in rural 1890s Tennessee is a bit peacemeal. The setup is the most interesting part, with Anna, a too poor to be quite

credible, coal miner's daughter taken in by her aunt to restore her health and teach her.

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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey

Loved it - this was exactly the right sort of fluff I needed right now. Ok, the dialect (throughout the book) gets a little annoying - but it's not bad, just...odd (and y'all as singular is weird. It's becoming true now, not at all sure it was true in period). Fascinating stuff about interactions

with Cherokees after the Trail of Tears - the ones who did _not_ get kicked off their land and sent west. I presume there are some facts behind the story. Nice integration of magic with said Cherokee, with Appalachian mines and company towns, with subsistence farmers in the region...and carving gravestones, which I recently learned was a important craft at that period. Anna May is nice; I knew what was wrong with her long before she did, unsurprisingly. Josh is fun. I like Aunt Jinny, too. And Jolene - reveals unexpected depths, in a lot of ways - nice! The only hole I saw was, how did Daran manage _not_ to reveal his attitudes to Jolene until the climax? I'd have expected him to slip long before. He certainly wasn't acting like he was reasonably worried about her, though maybe he was just mad enough to lose that concern. Interesting story; I hope we see more of them. If Anna is a Master, and Aunt Tilly gets her talking to Masters, there may be some complex stuff going on soon. Did Tilly's grandfather actually set up any Lodges, or not? I don't remember any mention of Lodges in Fire Rose, but that may have been the author developing new ideas later in the writing. Anyway. Good entry into the Elemental Masters series, and I think worth rereading for itself.

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LibraryThing member Glennis.LeBlanc

This story is set in the Appalachian Mountains with a poor miner’s daughter being sent to her root witch aunt to live. Anna May has always been a sickly child with never enough to eat, her father finally allows the child to live with his wife’s sister, a witchy woman who has always sent them

herbal medicines that they have sold for cash. Anna May quickly becomes healthy and soon shows an aptitude to magic since she is no longer living on poisoned land. Anna May slowly starts to learn how to make potions and infuse them with magic. As she becomes more comfortable living with her aunt other teachers of magic come to her including Jolene, a magical being that her aunt tells her to watch herself when she is with her. As Anna grows in power a local evil magician finds out about her and wants her to use to increase his power. A good story and nice to see the Elemental Masters stories move back to America.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

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LibraryThing member catseyegreen

The latest of the Elemental Masters series follows the trends of most of the others, young and inexperienced magician discovers his/her power, finds a teacher to guide through the learning process, falls foul of an evil magician and wins through to love. This one takes place in the Appalachians and

is written in a dialect that is sometimes difficult to follow.
library book read 1/16/2023

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