The Last Witchfinder: na - Tapa dura

an absolute delight...Seldom does one come across a story that works on so many levels. Not only does it satisfy by being a highly entertaining yarn detailing the picaresque, pillar-to-post adventures of its admirable and highly likeable protagonist, Jennet Stearne, it stands too as a sharply observed post-modernist satire that focuses upon the age-old tensions that both bind and divide us - religion and science... a hugely affable work, and a great pleasure to read. (John Berlyne SFREVU)

the sheer exuberance of the plot and the determination of the protagonist to reach her goal carries the reader along. A thoroughly entertaining novel. (WATERSTONE'S BOOKS QUARTERLY)

..the genius of this book...is that is perfectly captures the prismatic situations of science and theology in the 18th century...Part of the delight of this novel is the richness of the language, the carefully balanced coyness and coquetry of 18th century literarture, and the way in which the Principia Mathematica writes all the world in Newtonian geometry. (Farah Mendlesohn STRANGE HORIZONS)

The Last Witchfinder is cleverly written, with the detail of history providing a rich tapestry into which the fiction is woven, bringing events and chartacters both real and imagined to vivid life...Morrow has written a timely intervention into the dangersof Fundamentalism for the zeitgeist. (Brigid Cherry DREAMWATCH (May 2006))

An intense and dramatic novel set in one of the darkest periods of our country's history. (GOOD BOOK GUIDE)

James Morrow writes in order to tell us things: to admonish us about our coming destruction of the world, or about the battle between reason and superstition...what he is, deep down, is a satirist and moralist...What makes this satirical version of the struggle against fundamentalism so powerful is Morrow's scenes of natural beauty or urban squalor. These have the scent of real wild flowers, the squish of real mud and dung underfoot. (Roz Kaveney INDEPENDENT (11.5.06))

Romp is too small a word for this novel, although the fin and excitement James Morrow delivers inevitably brings it to mind. (Alastair Mabbott THE HERALD (13.5.06))

a dazzling novel about the clash between superstition and science...This is an extravagant, expansive, erudite, energetic feast of information and adventure...I felt bound to read on as if tied to a stake myself. (Jessica Mann SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (14.5.06))

[a] tremendous historical novel...In a book that will appeal to fans of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, James Morrow captures the imagination and excitement of a world long gone. (NEWMARKET JOURNAL and SUFFOLK FREE PRESS)

Inventive, original and downright entertaining with some fantastic fantasy twists, The Last Witchfinder is a book that really does take genre writing in a completely new and highly entertaining direction. (James Whittington THE DARK SIDE)

Jennet is the daughter of the Witchfinder of Mercia and East Anglia. Whilst her father roams the countryside with her brother Dunstan in search of heretics, Jennet is left behind to be schooled by her aunt Isobel in the New Philosophy principally expounded by Isaac Newton. But her aunt's style of scientific enquiry soon attracts the attention of the witchfinders. To save her aunt, Jennet travels to Cambridge to seek the help of Newton himself. On the way she meets Dr Barnaby Cavendish and his 'Museum of Wondrous Prodigies' including the Bird-Child of Bath, The Lyme Bay Fish Boy and the Sussex Rat Baby. What they haven't bargained on is being hoodwinked by Newton's great rival Robert Hooke. Isobel is burned at the stake but in her dying moments, begs Jennet to devote her life to overturning the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. This is a huge rollercoaster of a novel as Jennet travels to America and witnesses the Salem witch trials; is abducted by Indians; begins an affair with Benjamin Franklin; travels back to England and finally meets the real Newton; is shipwrecked; then ends up back in America where her brother is now the Witchfinder Royal. In a great final showdown between old superstition and new science, Jennet decides to have herself accused of witchcraft in order to disprove its existence.