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Book Review: The Witch’s Lens by Luanne G. Smith
A witch finds herself recruited to WWI’s eastern front to fight a scourge of zombies.
Summary:
With her husband off fighting at World War I’s eastern front, Petra Kurková embraces her fleeting freedom, roaming the city at night with her camera. A born witch, she’s discovered that she can capture the souls of the dead on film. Her supernatural skills don’t go unnoticed by the enigmatic Josef Svoboda. He’s recruiting a team of sorcerers to infiltrate the front lines, where the bloodshed of combat has resurrected foul creatures. Petra’s unique abilities will be needed against the most dangerous enemies of all—those ever present, undead, and unseen.
Deep in the cursed Carpathian Mountains, the ragtag team meets with an emissary of an ancient organization founded to maintain balance between worlds. Photographing the escalating horrors is beyond anything Petra imagined. So are the secrets among her fellow witches. But Petra can’t turn back. Not before she discovers her husband’s fate and the myriad ways her magic is manifesting. To defeat an occult foe, Petra must release the power she’s been concealing for so long, or risk damning a war-torn world to ashes.
Review:
I came into this book expecting a lot of WWI with a dash of witches but it ended up being the other way around.
If it wasn’t for the book’s blurb mentioning WWI and one passing mention of the Archduke’s assassination, it would be possible to read this book and think the entire war was a fantasy. This becomes increasingly so as the book progresses. Perhaps I missed something but at first it sounds like the humans are fighting and unaware of any supernatural folks participating in the war pushing it one way or the other. Then later it seems like everyone knows about witches. So which is it?
The book starts slowly, showing Petra living on her own, lonely and bored, going out at night to take photos since she’s discovered the dead show up in them. I was intrigued by this and wondering why Petra can only see the dead in her photos, but the why is never revealed. The camera is useful to the plot but not in the way you would imagine from what we know it can do.
The zombies in the book are the fast type. (See more zombie recommendations from me.) They can move at superhuman speeds. An interesting unique take is that zombies can continue to exist among the living until they’re called upon by another power to act like a zombie. They’re basically Trojan horses among the soldiers.
There is some light romance in the book. Personally, it didn’t work for me because we see Petra starting to long for a man who isn’t her husband. That’s just not a plot point I personally enjoy. The romance is hinted at in the book. There is not even a kiss. I suspect it will get stronger in the sequel. Those who want to read for the romance should know this is a very slow burn.
If we ignore the confusing aspects of whether or not everyone in the world knows about the witches, the plot does escalate in a way that mostly make sense and things come to a head with quite a bit of action. But there is an element of “the chosen one,” which I find dull. Especially in a book about WWI. I wanted to see everyone coming together with unique strengths. Not one overpowered person.
Overall, this book wasn’t a match for me. I wanted a lot more WWI than was in it. Recommended to those interested in a witch’s war with a dash of light, slow-burn romance.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 255 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
Summary:
Cathy and her brother Rob live with their emotionally distant grandfather on family land in England because her mother left, and her father died in a mental institution. Cathy and Rob seek refuge with each other against the world, but World War I won’t let them keep the world at bay forever.
Review:
I generally enjoy controversial books, and I heard that this historical fiction included the always controversial plot point of incest. The short version of my review is: it’s amazing how boring a book about incest and WWI can actually be. For the longer version, read on.
The book is told non-linearly in what appears to be an attempt to build suspense. The constant jumping with very few reveals for quite some time, though, just led to my own frustration.
I was similarly frustrated by the fact that Cathy’s childish interpretation of her father’s mental illness never progresses. She never moves from a child’s understanding to an adult’s understanding. This lack of progress gave a similar stagnant feeling to the book.
Of course, what the book is best-known for is the incest between Cathy and Rob. I found the scenes of incest neither shocking nor eliciting of any emotion. There are scenes where Cathy and Rob discuss how “unfair” it is that they cannot have children and society will judge them. But then again there are scenes that imply that Rob took advantage of Cathy. Well, which is it? It’s not that I demand no gray areas, but the existence of gray areas in such a topic would best be supported by a main character with insight. Cathy remains childlike throughout the book. Indeed, I think the characterization of Cathy is what holds the whole book back. Because the book is Cathy’s perspective, this lack in her characterization impacts the whole thing. What could be either a horrifying or a thought-provoking book instead ends up being simply meh. A lot of time is spent saying essentially nothing.
That said, I did enjoy how the author elicits the setting. I truly felt as if I was there in that cold and often starving rural England. I felt as if I could feel the cold in my bones. That beauty of setting is something that many writers struggle with.
Overall, this book read as gray and dull to me as the early 20th century English countryside it is set in. Readers with a vested interest in all varieties of WWI historic fiction and those who enjoy a main character with a childlike inability to provide insight are the most likely to enjoy this book. Those looking for a shocking, horrifying, or thought-provoking read should look elsewhere.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 320 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: PaperBackSwap
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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