If you’re a his­tor­i­cal purist, than Witch­struck may not be the book for you. Lamb has woven together his­tor­i­cal fig­ures and events with fic­tional char­ac­ters and the super­nat­ural. It’s an unusual com­bi­na­tion but one that I really, really enjoyed.

Set in 1554, Witch­struck intro­duces the story of Meg, ser­vant to the closely guarded Eliz­a­beth, and a prac­tic­ing witch. It’s not long before a des­per­ate Eliz­a­beth turns to Meg for help, ask­ing her to use her magic to fore­see the future. Will she or won’t she be queen?

With grow­ing polit­i­cal unrest, the arrival of a Span­ish priest who seems deter­mined to uncover her secrets and a ruth­less witch hunter clos­ing in on her, Meg finds her­self in increas­ing dan­ger. It’s not long before her loy­al­ties are tested when she inad­ver­tently becomes mixed up in trea­so­nous plot that could see Eliz­a­beth crowned, or exe­cuted, with Meg right along­side her.

I’ve always been drawn to sto­ries about witch­craft, whether they lean towards the super­nat­ural, fea­tur­ing kick-ass women with actual pow­ers, or focus on a more his­tor­i­cal por­trayal. Both fas­ci­nate me and Witch­struck, to my delight, is a com­bi­na­tion of the two. Meg and her Aunt are both witches, a dan­ger­ous prac­tice in Tudor Eng­land. In order to sur­vive, Meg must hide who she really is, trust­ing no one, yet she can­not help but find her­self drawn to Ale­jan­dro, a young priest sent to spy on Elizabeth’s household.

For those of you who know your Tudor his­tory, Witch­struck is set at Wood­stock Palace, where Eliz­a­beth was impris­oned from 1554 — 1555 under the watch­ful eye of Sir Henry Bed­ing­field, who also appears briefly as a char­ac­ter in the book. Though the novel pri­mar­ily focuses on Meg, Lamb incor­po­rates his­tor­i­cal events, such as Queen Mary’s phan­tom preg­nancy, into the story. Through­out, Lamb man­ages to main­tain a bal­ance between fic­tion and his­tory and the two flow together almost seam­lessly, though I would have loved it if Eliz­a­beth had played a greater part in the story. Lamb cap­tures her renowned haughty and fiery per­son­al­ity per­fectly, and I look for­ward to see­ing more of her in the sec­ond book.

I also wish Mar­cus Dent had had a stronger pres­ence, allow­ing more time for his char­ac­ter to be built up sub­tly, but this is only a small, nig­gling com­plaint. More impor­tantly, Lamb nails Meg and Alejandro’s scenes and it was their rela­tion­ship that really made this book for me. It’s been a while since an author man­aged to cap­ture that flir­ta­tious, sexual-tension between two char­ac­ters that I love to read about and Lamb cer­tainly suc­ceeds with these two. The obsta­cles these two will have to over­come are nicely put into place in prepa­ra­tion for the next book and, aside from a sur­prise reveal at the end, are devel­oped more organ­i­cally than you often see in para­nor­mal YA.

Witch­struck stands out as one of the few young adult nov­els set in Tudor Eng­land. I’ve read a lot of adult books set dur­ing this period, but work­ing in fic­tional char­ac­ters and the para­nor­mal instead of stick­ing to pure his­tor­i­cal fact, Lamb has given her­self the free­dom to write a story that is more adven­ture than polit­i­cal intrigue and I think that will appeal to a lot of readers.

Lamb has cer­tainly impressed me with her debut YA, its one of the most enjoy­able his­tor­i­cal nov­els I’ve read in a long time, with a rich period set­ting, a relat­able hero­ine, a dis­turb­ing vil­lain and a slow-burn romance. I do wish we’d seen Meg use her power more, but since I’ve been promised fur­ther books I’m con­tent to wait. I’m excited see where this series goes.

On the blog today I’ve got Vic­to­ria Lamb answer­ing some ques­tions about her new his­tor­i­cal YA novel, Witch­struck.

Witch­struck is an inter­est­ing mix­ture of fic­tional char­ac­ters, the super­nat­ural and his­tor­i­cal fig­ures and events. What made you decide to set your story at Wood­stock and include Eliz­a­beth I and Sir Henry Bed­ing­field as char­ac­ters, instead of keep­ing it com­pletely fictional?

Right from the start, I wanted to cre­ate a fan­tasy story which was rooted in his­tor­i­cal real­ity — or as close to real­ity as we can come when writ­ing about real his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters. The best way seemed to be to set the story of Meg Lytton’s com­ing of age as a witch against some major land­mark of Tudor his­tory, and since Elizabeth’s early his­tory — her sister’s accu­sa­tions of trea­son, her long impris­on­ment dur­ing Bloody Mary’s reign — had always been a source of great fas­ci­na­tion for me, it was an obvi­ous choice. I was also keen to have a cast of fairly young char­ac­ters, all learn­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and cru­el­ties of their world as the story pro­gresses, so the young Princess Eliz­a­beth fit­ted the bill nicely.

I rather liked Ale­jan­dro *cough*. Is he based on any­one in particular?

I always write my lead­ing men as if they were me, but male. So Ale­jan­dro is roughly based on how I would ide­ally be if I were a young Spaniard in Tudor Eng­land. Does that make sense? He’s not based on my hus­band or an old flame, in other words. Though I rather wish I was mar­ried to him myself. (Sorry, darling!)

Appar­ently Witch­struck is the first in a planned five-book series. Are all five nov­els likely to fol­low Meg and Alejandro’s characters?

At the moment, we’re look­ing at three books ini­tially, but with the strong like­li­hood of more to come if the series as a whole demands it. And yes, this is very much Meg and Alejandro’s story. I wouldn’t dream of not hav­ing those two in the very thick of the action.

Can you give us any teasers of what’s to come?

I can’t be too spe­cific, but let’s just say the tem­per­a­ture really hots up in book two. Meg is forced to cast a spell so dan­ger­ous that it impacts on every­one in Eng­land, and Ale­jan­dro isn’t sure how long he can con­tinue to turn a blind eye to Meg’s activ­i­ties as a witch. Yet the chem­istry between them is stronger than ever. What’s a would-be priest to do?

I really liked how you cap­tured Elizabeth’s renound fiery tem­per. Will she become a more promi­nent char­ac­ter in the later books?

As I said, this series is very much Meg and Alejandro’s story. But Eliz­a­beth is a con­stant pres­ence through­out these books, some­times sup­port­ive of their trou­bled love, some­times a dis­ap­prov­ing older sis­ter fig­ure for Meg — and who seems deter­mined to keep them apart. The impris­oned Tudor princess pro­vides a his­tor­i­cal con­text for their rela­tion­ship, con­stantly tests their loy­al­ties, and reminds the reader how dan­ger­ous the times are for all of them.

It’s clear you have a pas­sion for his­tory! If you could, is there a par­tic­u­lar era/event/Tudor court you’d like to go back to and expe­ri­ence first hand?

As a writer I find the Tudor court’s com­plex­ity and intrigue fas­ci­nat­ing, but as a reader I prob­a­bly love the Regency era best, the time against which Jane Austen’s sto­ries are set. What I wouldn’t give to be a care­fully restrained Regency hero­ine, being wooed by a very cor­rect but inwardly smoul­der­ing gentleman!

What kind of research did you do for the book?

I’m lucky enough to have a Reader’s Card for the Bodleian Library, one of the best research libraries in the world, so am often to be found there with my head in a book. It helps that I love research, but pre­fer the actual writ­ing, oth­er­wise I would prob­a­bly never have got started on chap­ter one.

Can you share any interesting/unusual tid­bits or facts about Tudor Eng­land you came across dur­ing your research?

I love that Tudor dresses were not one-piece dresses like the ones we wear today! Tudor dresses were made up of a foreskirt which had to be attached to a sleeve­less bodice or top half. Often there was no front to the skirt either (a dec­o­ra­tive pet­ti­coat or ‘kir­tle’ would show through a V-shaped open­ing instead). Most sleeves were just laced onto the bodice as required, so could be mix and match, though very heavy jew­elled sleeves would need to be sewn labo­ri­ously into place, and unpicked at bed­time. That’s why dress­ing and undress­ing a wealthy noble­woman often took sev­eral hours and numer­ous female helpers. So next time you see a Tudor film where the women slip eas­ily in and out of their gowns …

Witch­struck is your debut YA novel, although I believe you also have a his­tor­i­cal adult novel out this year as well. Do you write dif­fer­ently or have a dif­fer­ent process when writ­ing for a younger audience?

I don’t have a dif­fer­ent process as far as I’m aware, and I don’t adjust my nar­ra­tive voice par­tic­u­larly, but I prob­a­bly write more freely for YA read­ers. Adult his­tor­i­cal nov­els are often required to be quite dense in detail and heavy on polit­i­cal con­tent, and although I love to delve into those areas, it’s rather more fun to write fast-paced adven­ture scenes. I would say that adven­ture is clos­est to the kind of sto­ries I like to read myself, so much of the time I’m writ­ing for myself with YA sto­ries, whereas I’m prob­a­bly more aware of an out­side ‘reader’ with my adult books.

The Tudor period is a very pop­u­lar era for his­tor­i­cal fic­tion — what would you say makes Witch­struck stand out from all the others?

Well, for a start, it’s not that com­mon to write YA Tudor fic­tion, so that’s a stand-out on its own. But I also think the adven­ture ele­ment is prob­a­bly quite unusual too in com­bi­na­tion with para­nor­mal romance. I’ve never been sat­is­fied with books that don’t include a thriller or adven­ture ele­ment, so it tends to be my first con­sid­er­a­tion when putting a new plot together, i.e. is this story going to be excit­ing enough?

A big thanks to Vic­to­ria for agree­ing to take part in an inter­view! Make sure you stop by Jera’s Jam­boree tomor­row on the Witch­struck blog tour to find out more about the book!