Today I am reviewing another book from Witchipedia's Read A Long Book Club, Curses & Bindings: How To Do Them, How To Defend Against Them, How To Heal From Them, by Tannita. I would like to say that this isn't normally the type of book that I'd read, but that's not entirely true. Reading about the darker aspects of magick is something of a guilty pleasure of mine so I was pleased when the author requested I add this book to the Book Club roster. However, this book took me much farther outside my comfort zone than I was at all interested in going, in more ways than one.
My very first impression was one of absolute awe that a book so poorly formatted and with such abysmal grammar ever made it to publishing. I suppose it was self-published. But even so, you'd think the author would have had at least one friend read it over before presenting it to the world. It's not just a few typos- I'm talking about major issues. Lots of , , , <-- Yes that. That doesn't belong in any publish work. It's annoying enough in a forum but seeing , , , in nearly every line of a book you paid money for is more than distracting. It makes my eyes bleed. The author also does not seem to have a firm grasp on the difference between they're, their and there, weak and week and loose and lose. (I once broke up with a guy because he wrote me a letter in which he declared that he didn't want to "loose" me. Seriously, that's why. I couldn't get past the "loose".) I know not everyone is as grammar extreme as myself, but for crying out loud; this is a published book that I paid for! There is also quite a lot of weird sentence structure that leads me to believe that English is not the author's first language, but that doesn't excuse the rest of the mess.
That all being said, there is some good information in the book if you can find it within the author's rambling writing style. She does stick to the topics within the headers, but there really are no sub-topics and she seems to bounce around between some here and there. This can be confusing.
It is also important to note that the author makes quite a strong assumption that the reader already has basic magical skills. The spells are not step-by-step, but very general and the reader is obliged to fill in the gaps with previous magical knowledge. I think this is a good approach to a book on such a heavy subject. I frankly find all the repeated basic review so common in books that are supposed to be 102 and above to be annoying and boring.
What else is there to say? The subject matter was uncomfortable. I found myself growing red in the face at the suggestion that I might want to magickally encourage someone to step in front of a moving vehicle or similar. But I do believe it's subject matter that the advanced practitioner should take a look at eventually, if only for informational purposes.
I did not hate this book completely, it had good information, it was interesting, but it was not a pleasure to read.
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