This is the first in a series (Revenge of the Witch) and I'm not typically a series fan, but this short novel did have some interesting aspects, and I am a fan of going off the beaten track, so this appealed to me. That said, I have mixed feelings about whether I'll pursue it beyond this story, which is in effect (as are all first volumes) just a prologue. I'm not a fan of prologues either, and I typically skip them!
The story is a bit of a rip-off of an English legend so why it's set in the US is a mystery. Apparently no novel is worth reading unless it's US-based! I don't subscribe to that, but the premise for this one intrigued me. Rather than go out snatching babies from their homes and eating them as the legendary Black Annis does, this Black Annis is a demon-destroyer. She doesn't do this out of any sort of altruism however, but through a desire for vengeance on her tormentors and captors after having been kept in hell for four hundred years.
How she survived compos mentis during that time is rather skipped over, but Annis's survival trick in the carnal world is to take over a new body whenever she's done with the old one. She does this by finding someone who is evil and simply inhabiting their body, thereby putting an end to their evil reign. There's no clear word on what happens to the old bodies which Annis discards. How this behavior got her into hell is also rather danced around. After her break from hell though, and through a misunderstanding, she inhabits the wrong woman (that is, an innocent rather than a guilty one) and she manages to escape from a sex-slavery den with that woman's lover. Their new relationship isn't carnal; it's fraught with danger since demons do not stop hunting her.
This was one thing which made me hesitant about reading another volume. Do I really want to read another book about violent slaughtering of disgusting demons? One volume is usually more than enough of that sort of thing, and the problem with series is that by their very nature they're derivative, repetitive, unimaginative, and therefore boring, if not sickening. My jury is still out on whether or when "I'll be back!" Part of the problem with series and one which was exhibited here quite strongly, is that the first volume is all-too-often mistakenly used as the workhorse in building the world in which the series will take place.
I got the feeling that this was like the opening stage of a chess game, with key pieces being moved into place. The problem as that I was hoping for an actual game, and I never really got one. The story never got past the opening gambit. This is a problem. I wish more writers of series would actually give you a novel to read and enjoy, and they would worry about filling out their world in subsequent volume rather than try cramming their entire set-up into the first volume so all you get is world building instead of a satisfying story. This story was okay, but it wasn't as rewarding as it could have been had the author put more into it. It wasn't really a whole story, so that was a downer for me.
The writing in general was good. There was only one real writing issue I can recall, and it was where Annis and her friend were breaking into a vampire residence which had armed human guards, and one of the guards had instructed another guard to kill Annis and her friend. In the end, it was the guard who got shot, and I read, "Hey, aren't they gonna know you just killed that guard?" Well yeah! The guard had been instructed to shoot them , so the other guard was expecting to hear two shots, not one! Why they would think the shot would give anything away was a mystery. The question that was asked ought to have been "Hey, aren't they expecting two shots?" So, it could have been better thought-through, but it wasn't a disaster.
Be warned that the descriptions are quite graphic and the language isn't restrained at all. That's what gave the book authenticity for me, because it if had gone with a PG-13 take, it would have sucked, and sounded so hollow and pathetic. But there are only so many descriptions of vile demons, and only so many ways of killing them that I can stand to read before tedium sets in. This is why it was hard to see where this book would go from here and still manage to keep things fresh and entertaining - and interesting. There was nothing in this set-up which made me desperate to read on and find out what happened to character X or situation Y, although I did like the general tone of the story.
So overall, I consider this a worthy read, but I'm skeptical about future installments.
