Mooncakes

Mooncakes (2019) Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu

Nova Huang lives with her grandmothers and helps out at their store. She’s also an apprentice witch who hasn’t yet left home for an apprenticeship.

Tam Lang was Nova’s childhood friend whose family never stayed in once place for long, but she’s back now because there’s something unpleasant in the woods and Tam feels responsible, since it requires werewolf magic to fight.

This is a YA story, with both characters out of school but still not quite moved on from their childhoods.

Although magic is a secret, it doesn’t seem to be a well-kept one, but perhaps there are just a number of witches and other supernatural creatures in town.

Nova’s friend Tat is not a witch, but a scientist, and although the very idea of magic bothers her scientific mind, she accepts Nova and kind of wants to study magic in a scientific way.

Actually, I’d kind of love to read that–Tat measuring and quantifying magic.

It’s a cute story, but some of the bits seemed glossed over, which bugged me, like what happened to Nova’s parents? Why are they ghosts? How can Nova’s hearing aid take out an evil-behaving witch?

I wanted to know the answers to these questions, but was disappointed.

Publisher: Oni Press
Rating: 7/10

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