Treason and plot

31st October to 6th November 2021

Forewarned is, well, forewarned: #WitchWeek2021 begins in roughly two months time. This runs from Hallowe’en to Bonfire Night, an event first begun by Lory Hess at The Emerald City Book Review (now of Enter the Enchanted Castle), and is an annual series of guest posts co-hosted by Lizzie of Lizzierosswriter.com and myself.

Inspired by a fantasy by Diana Wynne Jones (called, naturally, Witch Week) this year’s event will feature Treason and Plot as a theme, taking its cue from when conspirators planned in 1603 to blow up Parliament with all who were in it, including King James I.

We’ve lined up a fine selection of bloggers who’ll be contributing guest posts looking at some of the ways the theme is interpreted in speculative fiction. A few of us will also be having a conversation about Shakespeare’s The Tempest (because it’s got magic! treason! plots!). But feel free, as I know some of you are planning, to choose your own reads for the week and to share your thoughts on them before, during and after.

More detail to come, but book bloggers might like to know that when they’re done with Readers Imbibing Peril, which runs through September and October, there’ll still be some more creepy goings-on!

By the way, Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night may be part of a peculiar British tradition but the Guy Fawkes mask is very familiar now across the world as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism, thanks to Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta (reviewed here) and the film based on it; treason and plot are its very key notes.