The full series. note
A 15-book series by Cate Tiernan (known as Wicca in the UK and elsewhere) about 16-year-old Morgan Rowlands who, after discovering that the dreamy and mysterious new guy at school is a witch, finds out that she herself is a very powerful "blood witch", descended from one of the Seven Clans of Wicca. All sorts of magical and romantic drama ensue.It consists of the following entries:
- Book of Shadows
- The Coven
- Blood Witch
- Dark Magick
- Awakening
- Spellbound
- The Calling
- Changeling
- Strife
- Seeker
- Origins
- Eclipse
- Reckoning
- Full Circle
- Night's Child
This series shows examples of:
- A-Cup Angst: Morgan complains about this at least three times per book. Hunter isn't displeased by it at all.
- Becoming the Mask: Cal insists that he truly fell in love with Morgan after being instructed by his mother to seduce her.
- Brother–Sister Team: Sort of: Sky and Hunter are cousins, though they were raised together like siblings.
- The Chosen One: A sguir dan or destroyer, who is said to set the path for the Woodbanes once every several generations and are given strong magic to accomplish it to boot. The current one turns out to be Morgan.
- The Clan: Seven of them, actually, though centuries of fighting, persecution and intermarriage have (at least theoretically) made clan identity meaningless. Unless you're an evil Woodbane, of course.
- Call-Forward: Early on in the series, Morgan has a vision of her future daughter Moira, a character who doesn't appear until the final book.
- Distant Finale: The final book is set years into the future, in which Morgan's daughter is herself a teenager, just beginning to understand her own powers.
- Government Agency of Fiction: The International Council of Witches is more extra-governmental, answerable to no one. It's main job seems to be to track down witches using dark magick and stripping them of their powers—without a trial or any sort of chance to put forth a defense; Morgan derides them as the "hall monitors of Wicca."
- Half-Human Hybrid: It's supposedly impossible for a female blood witch to reproduce with a male human, and male blood witches can reproduce with human females only if they will it. Alisa Soto is one.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Ciaran is Morgan's real birth father. A distant version is seen later, with Origins with hints in that book and the reveal in the following book, Eclipse. Sort of. It was Morgan learning her descent from the creator of the dark wave and later, the truth about Alisa's dead mother.
- Left Hanging: In one of the early books, Morgan is tailgated by someone in the car behind hers, causing her to spin off the road. We never discover who did this or why.
- Letter Motif: The initials M.R.: Maeve Riordan, Morgan Rowlands, Moira Rowlands— though oddly, that inital set seems to be recent, going by the initials carved on Morgan's athame.
- Instant Expert: There is a process called "tath meanma brach" which allows two witches to "mind-meld" together, thus transposing all of one's thoughts to the other. Morgan does this with Alyce, thus attaining years worth of knowledge and experience in a single evening. How convenient.
- Redemption Equals Death: Cal, who throws himself in front of his mother's magic in order to save Morgan.
- Necromancer: Witches can speak with the dead by performing a very dangerous and forbidden spell. Hunter's father is revealed to be doing this to speak to his late wife.
- Playing with Fire: Morgan has a particular affinity with fire. She uses flames to scry, a process which is said to be very tricky (most use water or stones).
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: How the first dark wave was created. A combination of anti-Woodbane persecution, being spurned by the man she loves and being sentenced to death, Rose McEwan ends up levelling the next town over with it.
- Red String of Fate: Muirn beatha dans are a blood witch's soulmate, who is also a blood witch. While love is usually implied, a good relationship is not—there are a number of characters who are the offspring of a one-night stand between muirn beatha dans.
- Telepathy: Blood witches can send "witch messages" telepathically. They can also mind-meld.
- Tear-Apart Tug-of-War: The second book, The Coven, begins with Morgan being confronted by her Catholic parents for continuing to practice Wicca. She retorts that she's a blood witch, and therefore they must be too. When they deny this, she jokes, "What am I, adopted?" only to be met with their Oh, Crap! faces and realise it's true. She runs to find her birth certificate and confirm, only for her mother to try to snatch it from her. They struggle, and the document tears in half, but Morgan is holding the piece that proves it.
- Unwanted Spouse: Hunter's father felt this way towards his first wife, Selene Belltower, Cal's mother.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Seen later in the series as something only very powerful witches can achieve. Guess who manages it first try.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The 'older' forms of the names for the Clans could be considered this.
