First impression review: War Witch, by Layla Nash
I actually read this other witches-and-werewolves book before ‘Mooncakes’, but it took longer to decide what to say about it. It was recommended to me by my best friend from college. She loved it, I mostly liked it, and we both had some critiques of it – agreeing that the love interest is frustratingly useless and the romance didn't even deserve tagging in the description, for instance. But we had a very intense debate about how to interpret the relationships between three of the female characters (probably greatly annoying a third friend on on that text stream who had no idea what we were ranting about). Therefore, this review is going to end up reflecting that conversation as much or more than my initial impression.
One of my favorite things about this book is the way it drops you into the middle of a story and a world without either confusing you or resorting to massive exposition dumps. Instead, it feeds you bits of information just as you need them. At 11 pages in, you’ve already learned: A) magical beings (somehow) lost a war against humans and are basically a discriminated-against minority group, B) they are supposed to wear rings that identify their powers and alignment, C) our main character, Lily, is a retired war witch with PTSD who is unaligned, D) witches can identify each other’s “magical signatures”, E) it is possible to gather up someone else’s magic and redirect it and F) demon realms exist. But none of that world-building feels heavy-handed; it just seeps into your brain as you follow what is mostly an action scene.
The magic in this book is fascinating, and really visual: killing magic is blue, for instance, while a mostly-disarmed hex can cover someone's skin in a purple web. An iron collar and handcuffs can restrain a witch because iron dampens magic, but the reaction can leave a scar. Shifters have magic too that goes beyond their ability to change form, and demons are also in the mix. Even using clean magic can act like a drug, but demon magic taints the witch who uses it and gives them a red ring around the iris of their eye. Witch magic can be shared directly, which is more powerful than picking it up from the environment. But it is a very intimate act, almost like sex, and, if one partner is reluctant, either giving or receiving the magic can feel like a violation.
The other thing I liked was the voice of the main character. Normally I’m not much of a fan of first-person narration for books; I tend to think it works much better for short stories, particularly mystery and horror, where being in the character’s head and only getting the information as they do or as they are willing to tell it builds atmosphere. In longer books with a lot of characters and action, on the other hand, first person can be limiting and, unless you happen to really like the character’s voice, rather annoying as well. Here, the somewhat claustrophobic quality of being in one character’s head works quite well, because the focus is on former “war witch” Lily/Lilith and her past and ongoing trauma. You can feel her exhaustion, how near she is to her breaking point, as she is dragged back into a type of conflict she’d tried to leave behind.
At first, I was excited that this book involved werewolves as well as witches – and especially that Lily's best friend Moriah (Mo) was one of them – because I love werewolves even though they don’t have that many good stories, and as far as female werewolf major characters go there’s...maybe just Sergeant Angua from Discworld. Unfortunately, the wolves in this book were a bit of a let-down. Well, shifters, but the were-bears and were-lions and such don’t do anything at all and so might as well not be there. There isn’t any alpha-omega weird sex stuff going on, thank god, but the packs do have a leader alpha and there’s a lot of patriarchal machismo. I do appreciate Lily’s observation that Mo’s brother ending up pack leader instead of her because he’s male is just a cultural thing, not a biological one. But, on the other hand, there is a sort of pack magic that enables alphas to actually force others to bow which…eww. Didn’t care for it. The female werewolves also never actually change or fight1, while the dudes are always a few seconds away from sprouting fangs or fur. The reason this annoys me (beside the obvious) is that wolf packs aren’t like that. To the extent that “alpha” means anything at all, there are two alphas: the male and female who are the parents of the rest. A pack forms when the older cubs stick around to help raise their siblings, many of them eventually setting off and become “alphas” in their turn somewhere else. Again, possibly the only place I’ve seen this done properly is Discworld, where Angua’s home pack is headed by her parents, with her mother being the more political one. This book didn’t have the worst werewolves I’ve ever seen, but it was still a bit disappointing.
1. There’s even an old tradition that involves stealing brides, which really should just result in some dude getting badly mauled by the annoyed bachelorette. Actually, Lily even points out that that is what would likely happen if someone tried to snatch Mo’s sister…and yet we still never see either of them fight!
A by-product of first-person narration, or of third-person that very closely tracks the a single character, is that our perception of the world and other characters is warped by that character’s perceptions, biases, misconceptions, etc. This can be used to great effect, but unless there is a lot of interpersonal interaction it can lead to other characters feeling a bit flat in comparison to the main character. That was something that bothered me here much more than it did my friend. Her focus was more on the psychological exploration of Lily (which is, again, excellent), but if a book has a large cast I like to get to know the other characters a bit more. Some of the worst casualties here were two characters Lily trusted but is betrayed by at different points. We see Lily’s hurt and, in the case of the betrayal that happens in the book rather than in the past, her shock…but I didn’t feel it, because I didn’t have enough information about the other characters to believe them trustworthy in the first place and thus experience the betrayal alongside her. Sam? Who the heck is Sam? You say he once truly loved you? OK, but what made you think that was the case? If we’re going to have an “OMG! Not character X!” moment, I just think it works better if the reader – not just the main character – is attached to the character who is about to die or turn evil or whatever before that plot twist happens.
We did both agree that the werewolf cop love interest was completely useless. He gets so caught up in protective male mode that he pretty much only gets in the way of the plot, by trying and failing to stop Lily from doing dangerous things but never actually just assisting her. As my friend pointed out, he’s the opposite extreme of the damsel who can’t do anything but scream or faint; both are so caught up in expected gender roles that they become annoying and pointless. I couldn’t help but contrast him with Mika in ‘Seraph of the End’. Mika’s main goal in life is to protect his beloved, so when Yu proposes some suicidal-sounding plan he always points out why it is dangerous and dumb…but also always ends up coming along because that’s the next best option for making sure Yu is OK. That’s actually helpful undead-boyfriend behavior! Also, since “burly Viking” isn’t my type, I couldn’t even enjoy Lief as eye candy2. In fact, the flirty pack-magic interrogation that happened gave me the creeps and really would have been a deal-breaker if I was Lily! Romance isn’t really even the point of this story – they’ve only kinda sorta agreed to go on a date at the end - so he could be cut entirely as far as I’m concerned.
2. Or is it “brain candy” if you are reading and imagining?
Where my friend and I differed was in our interpretation of two of the female side characters: Mo and another war witch. Stop here or skip to recommendation if you want to avoid **spoilers**.
I was disappointed Mo didn’t get more stuff to do, mainly because, as noted above, it is rare to find a good female werewolf character. And while Mo is also a little pushy in her protectiveness of Lily, unlike Leif she finds useful things to do or at least doesn’t get in the way. For instance, she previously saved Lily’s life by nursing her through magic withdrawal and several times during the story gets her food, a bath, and/or a safe place to sleep when she needs it. And their interaction when Lily is about to go off to a dangerous, perhaps fatal, fight caught me right in the feels:
“I’d almost talked myself into getting up and heading for the Skein to end it all when my phone buzzed. Moriah. I hesitated before I answered; hearing her voice might destroy whatever resolve I’d pulled together. But I wanted her to know the truth, at least. Whatever stories and lies they made up later… ‘I can’t run,’ I said. ‘Like I told Leif. This is witch business. And I…I had a hand in it.’ ‘It’s not your business,’ she said, desperation making her shout… ‘You don’t have to do this. You can’t fight them all on your own.’ … ‘It’s too dangerous, Mo. Believe me. Please. Don’t come to the Skein. Keep everyone away.’ Her voice reached me in a whisper. ‘You’re not coming back from where you’re going, are you?’ ‘I don’t think so.’…’Damn it, witch…Don’t do some ride-off-into-the-sunset bullshit now. You fought for ten years, and for another six, to live…when you need to, ask for help. We’ll be there. I’ll be there.’… ‘I’ll try, Moriah. And – just in case. Thank you. Love you.’ It was all I could get out before my voice cracked. ‘This isn’t goodbye, witch,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. I love your stupid, stubborn ass too’.
My friend, by contrast, thought Mo was boring, and that it was characters like Anna Marie or the werewolf Brandr who mattered because they understand Lily’s trauma on a level that Mo can’t; Therefore, Lily can interact with them more as an equal, whereas Mo is always trying to protect Lily in ways that show she doesn’t understand. She found it telling that Lily doesn’t really open up to Mo. I don’t entirely disagree – Ana Marie, another war witch, understands the kind of fighting they did more than any werewolf could, and Mo is kind of a basic “team mom” character as written. But even if AM and Lily understand each other’s trauma, I don’t think they initially understand each other as people. For instance, we know, and Mo knows, that Lily is the kind of person who would put herself at risk to save a random human, but AM assumes that Lily was involved in the deaths of witches they both cared about. She calls Lily a murderer before that even happens3 and afterwards would rather attack her than fight a literal demon! Brandr initially wanted to turn Lily into a werewolf and make her his bride, apparently not realizing that turning is effectively or actually death for a witch – and, if it wasn’t, she would rip out his throat as soon as she recovered. So, again, understanding comes later!
3. “I killed people, Lief. It was war, but I still killed people. Anna Marie will never let me forget that, and I can’t live with her judgement”
To me, it seems like all these characters are wrong about each other, and some of those misunderstandings get cleared up by the end. For instance, Anna Marie does end up fighting side-by-side with Lily eventually. Even if AM is still a bit of a petty bitch, by the end she realizes that Lily is A) not evil and B) really doesn’t want her job of official head witch. Lily is more qualified, yes, but there’s the PTSD to consider! By contrast, it really bothered my friend that Mo was advising (or “pushing”, depending on interpretation) alignment with her pack at the beginning of the book, when Lily clearly doesn’t want to be aligned. However, it seemed reasonable to me that a werewolf would see being part of a pack during peaceful times as being the safe, comfortable option compared to being an unaligned magic user who can get harassed by the cops and accused of dark magic and maybe killed. Mo stops recommending that move once she realizes the pack leaders have been up to some shady shit and the peace is breaking down, making the scenario of someone trying to use Lily as a weapon more likely!
The thing is…I’m not sure. I think the reason the two of us walked away from this book with such vastly different impressions of Mo and AM and what their role in the story is because we only actually witness a handful of interactions with each of them, always through Lily’s eyes. If the intent was “Lily and AM can understand each other and fight together because of their shared trauma, while Mo is the untraumatized person trying to help but being overly conformist/smothering” that would have come across clearer if we had a few more scenes that illustrated it. For example: AM showing true understanding of Lily earlier (not just in a situation that is “cooperate or die”) or Lily being irritated or hurt by Mo’s lack of understanding3. Conversely, the “these two serve as foils in different ways, and Lily needs both of them,” angle would have been enhanced by some tweaks in the last quarter of the book. For instance, it could be that Lily is wrong that Mo wouldn’t understand if she opened up to her. It doesn’t make sense to me that Mo – who also fought in the war – would be without trauma of her own; it may be that she is masking it under a cheerful face. On the other hand, Lily could be correct that initially Mo doesn’t get where she is coming from…but, like Anna Marie, Mo figures it out, and ends up coming to her aid in an unexpected way. Either would be fine, but I prefer the latter because seriously, why would you write a werewolf character and leave her almost as a nursemaid!
3. She does think, early on: “Though I couldn’t save their brother, Mo and her pack still felt they owed me blood debt. It was an uncomfortable burden to bear, particularly since there were some days I wondered if Mo truly considered me a friend, or if I was just another task she had to track and occasionally check up on.” But I didn’t put as much weight on that, because that’s the kind of thought you would have – accurate or not – when a lot of people want to use you, and you worry the main person who seems to care has already seen too much of your weak and broken side. I don’t even have any serious trauma but when I’m having a bad day or a conflict with someone, I will have “what if person X doesn’t actually like me” thoughts even when that is clearly not the case, due to some childhood peer-relationship baggage.
Some of that may be remedied later. This is the first book in a series, so we’ll probably get more time with all the character and more of their backstories later. Another element that is clearly setup for future stories is the concept of “uncontrolled shifters”, AKA “lokis4”. There’s a loki in this story who doesn’t do much other than drop hints that they think Lily is a loki too. My friend thought this added to Lily’s sense of isolation and being unable to trust anyone…and it did, a bit. But, personally, I wish Nash had stuck to the vaguer hints about something being different about Lily beyond her being a more powerful witch than most people suspect – for instance, several characters question why she can be influenced by and maybe even use pack magic – and introduced the lokis later. After all, we never actually find out in this book what an “uncontrolled shifter” does, or why the regular witches and shifters don’t trust them, so this storyline kind of takes time away from the development of other characters.
4. Gotta love that name!
Overall recommendation: A page-turning take on the urban fantasy genre, and a good exploration of the effects of trauma. Excellent witch magic, but unless you like the macho werewolf thing…maybe not the one to reach for if you are looking for creativity in that arena. If it weren’t for that – which I think ‘Underworld’ and ‘Twilight’ already did way too much of - this might well have been one for the “it oughta be a movie” category, because it does have strong and interesting visual elements.
