Human Rites

LoveReading Says

Established in 1869, Her Majesty’s Royal Coven (HMRC) is the UK’s official, government-sanctioned network of witches - women born with supernatural gifts: Sentinels with telepathy and telekinesis, Healers, Elementals, Oracles, and the rare, powerful Adepts who possess more than one.

In Human Rites, the fragile alliances built over the past three books collapse under the weight of betrayal, grief, and rising demonic threats. Gaia, the divine mother herself, may have gifted her daughters magic, but now something ancient is pushing back. Satanis has risen, fractured into Lucifer, Belial, and Leviathan, and he’s using every tool (and teenage trauma) to drive the covens apart.

And yet, as always, the power lies with the girls - with Niamh, Elle, Leonie, Ciara - the millennial witches of West Yorkshire, now fully grown and battle-scarred, stepping into a terrifying new world.

Although you could read this as a standalone, why would you deprive yourself? Dawson gives you a wonderful who's who and what's what at the beginning of the book to refresh your memory, or bring you up to speed. But please, start with HMRC, and you can thank me later.

Utterly brilliant, I love her sweary, smart, spellbinding prose. Every short chapter title is a delicious pun. Every paragraph brims with righteous rage, gory detail, and gut-punch one-liners. Dawson is a queen of the modern fantasy voice: all sass, scars, and soft spots. She's created characters you ache for. These witches aren’t just magical,  they’re messy, vulnerable, vengeful, loving. You feel every rage spiral, every heartbreak, every inside joke shared over a takeaway curry.

And let's not forget the themes. From trans liberation and reproductive rights to grief, racism, and institutional rot, Dawson weaves current issues into myth with frightening realism. Love, betrayal, miscarriage, motherhood, identity, murder, forgiveness, rage. The final book pulls no punches. 

Human Rites is more than just the end of a fantasy series, it’s a powerful feminist manifesto wrapped within an apocalyptic showdown. It’s about sisterhood, trauma, growing up, growing angry, and finally letting go.

Six years. Four books. One final reckoning. I know the coven never ends because as long as there are women there will be witches. But oh I'm heartbroken to see the end of this trilogy. I loved every bloody page.

5 out of 5 pentagrams.

Deborah Maclaren

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