Witches In Flight is the last book in Geary’s WitchLight trilogy and brings the stories of Lizard, Elsie and Jennie to a happy close though, of course, they almost certainly will remain in the background of Geary’s continuing exploration of the Witch Central setting in Berkeley. The stakes are raised a bit in this final volume as Lizard and Elsie come to the close of their WitchLight experiences. Both Elsie and Lizard make some hard choices about what they want in terms of career and love in the next phase of their lives. Elsie’s blossoming into someone more spontaneous and fun, in particular, leaves her a bit more exposed to the consequences of risk-taking. Nonetheless, each of the three women achieves a new sense of identity and worth through the process.
Lizard started the trilogy as the youngest of the three principals and was dealing with the consequences of poverty, a lack of self-esteem and the petty crime that brought her to the attention of WitchLight in the first place. By this third book, she’s writing poetry, turning down millions of dollars and choosing to do what she loves: being a realtor. (No, that does not make much sense to me either, but you kind of go with it.) More importantly she finally becomes open to the possibility that she could be desirable to the rich dot-commer who has been pursuing through the previous two novels.
Jennie’s path is the most direct of the three. Essentially, she comes to accept her gifts as a mentor, and graduates into being the leader of WitchLight as whole allowing her predecessors to retire from the process. She does not really anticipate be given that responsibility, but she is ready for it and accommodates the transition with no real drama.
Elsie, on the other hand, probably faces the hardest trial of the three, and it should be noted that there is some mild possibility of her story being a bit of a trigger for some readers. As part of her process of becoming more passionate, open and spontaneous, she starts slipping out at night to dance with the owner of a local jazz club. Unfortunately, he turns out to be complete poseur with a prior record of using Rohipnol on unsuspecting women. However, the collective action of our beloved nosy witches save Elsie from a similar fate, and Elsie learns to strike a bit more of a balance in her risk-taking without reverting to her earlier controlling ways.
As all of Geary’s books over the past year and a half have been, I believe that the WitchLight Trilogy was a way for Geary to challenge her writing skills. In particular, this trilogy was a way to see if she could sustain a narrative over a longer page count while producing something a bit more self-contained than her continuing A Modern Witch series. I would say that she successfully achieved that goal, but I cannot imagine that anyone enjoying the WitchLight Trilogy would be content to stop there. Thus, the books are pretty nuch as integral to the Witch Central cannon as any of the other books in the setting.