Early Review – Night of the Witch (Witch and Hunter, Book 1) by Sara Raasch, Beth Revis (2/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Length: 675 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Release Date: August 6, 2019
ASIN : B07CRKXQ1Y
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in The Poppy War trilogy
Source: Got in Paperback as a Birthday Gift
Rating: 2/5 stars
“Fritzi is a witch. The lone survivor of a brutal attack on her coven, she’s determined to find her only remaining family member and bring the hexenjägers―zealot witch hunters―to justice for the lives they ended. To do this, she will need to take down their leader, the merciless and enigmatic Kommandant Dieter Kirch.
Otto is a hexenjäger―but that’s just his cover. Years ago, the hexenjägers burned his innocent mother alive, and he has been plotting his revenge against the people who tore apart his family ever since. And now the time has come for them to pay for what they’ve done.
When Fritzi and Otto are unexpectedly thrown together, neither is sure they can trust the other. The reluctant truce fueled by their common enemy takes them from the city at the heart of the hexenjägers’ power to the wild and mysterious Black Forest. As old truths come to light and new dangers are revealed, Fritzi and Otto uncover a horrifying magical plot at the center of the hexenjäger attacks that leads back to Kommandant Kirch . . . but their own growing feelings for each other may be the most powerful magic of all.”
Series Info/Source: 1st book in the Witch and Hunter series. I got an ebook of this through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: This was okay but also had some pretty big issues for me. The most glaring issue is the insta-love between the two main characters; a witch-hunter and witch literally fall in love in less than a day. Their love drives a lot of the story which just seemed ridiculous to me. In general this whole book was pretty boring and had a lot of plot holes. Previous to reading this I had read Revis’s “Across the Universe” series which I really enjoyed. I had also read Raasch’s “Snow Like Ashes” series which I really enjoyed and the first books in her “Stream Raiders” and “Set Fire to the Gods” series which I really did not like.
The story alternates POV between Fritzi (a herb witch) and Otto (a captain witch-hunter). The story starts with Fritzi surviving a horrible attack from the hexenjager in which the whole witch community she lives in is destroyed. Meanwhile, Otto is trying to hatch a plan from inside the hexenjager ranks with his sister to free a lot of the witches that have been captured before a mass burning of them happens. Fritzi disrupts this plan in a big way and the two are forced to work together and trust each other.
As with the immediate “soul love” between Fritzi and Otto a lot of things don’t make sense in this book. The villain in here doesn’t have very good motives (or any) and I was puzzled that a goddess would “mistakenly” give Fritzi’s brother these powerful gifts…I mean she pretty much lived in Fritzi and her brother’s heads, how could she miss what Fritzi’s brother was doing with his power?
There are a lot of weird plot points and holes in logic throughout the story that bothered me. In addition to that, the story is strangely boring and linear and just tough to stay involved in. I never really liked Otto or Fritzi much because we just aren’t allowed to really get to know them as a reader. The whole book is basically a cat and mouse chase to some mysterious woods with a big baddie that is chasing them for strangely undetermined reasons.
My Summary (2/5): Overall I wasn’t a fan of this book. The plot was both boring and full of plot holes. The insta-love between the two characters was horrible and never really gave us a chance to engage with and get to like the characters. I won’t be reading anymore in this series. Given my experiences with all of Raasch’s novels after “Snow Like Ashes” I don’t plan on picking up any more books by her. I just loved “Snow Like Ashes” so much that I keep hoping she’ll deliver on another series. This is the third series by her that I have started since “Snow Like Ashes” and it’s just as big of a miss for me as the other two were.
