Witchy Winter by David Butler
If you haven’t yet read Witchy Eye, please be sure to check out my review for it here.
“The magic is in the mystery and once the mystery is gone, so is the magic.”
~ Angela Morrissey, Hatching Pete
We live in a remarkable era where exceptional books appear within the fantasy genre and it’s many sub-genre’s at a rate which borders on alarming.
From the intricate lattice-work of magical systems which comprise The Wheel of Time, to the organized and absorbing worlds of Mistborn and Codex Alera, our cup runneth over with mystical adventure.
While each of those mentioned above (and the many others not mentioned above) are remarkable, they and their ilk approach magic as a rigid system akin to science. Each of the practitioners within those worlds are bound by rules and operating procedures which provide a framework upon which to build their world. Often times, this point is driven home by having the various witches and warlocks segregated by their magical abilities. Harry Potter and The Magicians are both exceptional examples of this idea in action.
With Witchy Winter, David Butler asks that you leave your minutia at the door and does his level best to rekindle within you a sense of wonder.
Do you remember the first time you saw the night sky in its full glory? Stood on a hill or with a telescope as the sheer enormity of the heavens covered you with a trillion pinpricks of light? There, in that moment, you realized that you’re just one person on a rock hurtling through a cosmos which is so fantastically large that we can barely comprehend it?
That is the wonder of which I speak.
David Butler’s second entry into the Witchy Eye series takes a vast tapestry of stars and weaves them together with careful magicks and slowly mounting tension. Action is the thread which binds all of his characters fates together, but when your heart is not pounding you’re left to bask in the vast and rich world that has been built.
And the magic is… well, magic.
It doesn’t often make sense in the quasi-scientific way of most other magical series. You’re given only a few hard limits of what is and what isn’t possible, yet it never feels lazy or contrived. Everything happens in a way which never brings you outside of the story, but at the same time you’re always left with that same sense of scale which dominated your first glimpse of the heavens.
Fantastical worlds-within-worlds are built once more from a love of song and language, and their purpose is to tell a story full of guile and mischief and heroism and damnation and salvation.
As the story builds and the magic ebbs and flows, I was constantly staring up at the heavens painted above me. Not since the awesome works of David Eddings have I been shown what would really happen in a world full of powers which can temporarily raise humanity to the divine, and then drive that divinity low like the hammer upon the anvil.
The wonder I felt was something I hadn’t realized I’d lost until I found it again. As the turned pages became completed chapters and I eventually reached The End, all I could think was that I had been invited to sit once more under the stars, with only my wits and my faith to guide me as the heavens shone down upon me in all their mysterious power and glory.
I invite you to sit down with Witchy Winter as I did, so that you too may experience a rekindling of the wonder our ancestors once knew.
Starfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
