Mildred’s Resistance by Katie Cross

Unlimited power can corrupt even the best of friends.

Warning: This review contains spoilers for both Miss Mabel’s School for Girls and Antebellum Awakening by Katie Cross. If you haven’t read them, please skip to the section that I have marked as safe from spoilers.

After the tragic events of Antebellum Awakening, I was more than delighted to know that we had not seen the end of High Priestess Mildred Graeme. Mildred is my favorite character in the books, and her death at the hands of Miss Mabel left a huge Mildred-sized hole in my heart. The woman was full of wisdom and a reserved ferocity that one cannot help but love. I don’t think I need to tell you how excited to learn that Katie Cross was going to give Mildred a book of her own, detailing the events that were alluded to in the previous two installments in the series.

End Spoilers.

Mildred’s Resistance covers about thirty years. At the beginning of the novel, we find a young and poor Mildred protecting her younger from their abusive father. The remainder of the novel follows her and her friends, Evelyn and Stella, as they discover their roles in the Central Network. This, of course, is Mildred’s book, so we get to spend more time with her than any other character, which I was just fine with. I highly enjoyed following Mildred in her transformation from an unsure witch who doesn’t know what she wants to a witch that learns to take charge and stand up for what is right even if it means losing those she holds most dear.

Unlike the first two installments of the Network Series that feature a first person point of view (from an entirely different character), Mildred’s Resistance is written in the third person point of view. As a writer myself, I know that it can be extremely difficult to master one or the other, but the author does great job with the new style. We get the same amount of depth in this book with Mildred as we do in Miss Mabel’s School for Girls and Antebellum Awakening with Bianca Monroe. I am constantly impressed at how Katie Cross brings a depth to her characters and her stories that not too many fantasy novels have.

Since Mildred’s Resistance is a prequel to the Network Series, you can read it two ways: after MMSfG and AA, or after. For the first option, it serves as a great setup for the other two books. For the second option, it serves as a great way to understand the world of Antebellum better than ever before and serves as a hint of what we may be able to expect from the next book in the Network Series, The High Priest’s Daughter, which will be out September 15, 2015!