Witch Bane

by Tim Marquitz

Sebastian is whisked away at birth, just moments after his mother's death. He returns nineteen years later, a warlock trained in the arts of war. Raised in secret and fed on tales of revenge, he seeks redemption against the witches who betrayed and murdered his mother.

Genres: Fantasy

179 pages, ebook

First published December 24, 2012

About the author

Tim Marquitz is the author of the Demon Squad series, The Enemy of My Enemy series (Kurtherian Gambit) along with Michael Anderle, the Blood War Trilogy, co-author of the Dead West series, as well as several standalone books, and numerous anthology appearances alongside the biggest names in fantasy and horror. Tim also collaborated on Memoirs of a MACHINE, the story of MMA pioneer John Machine Lober.

"Horror becomes art when it flows from the pen of Tim Marquitz." ~ Bobby D. Whitney - BookWenches

"Witty, sarcastic and hilarious." Michelle - Publishers Weekly

Reviews

[Mihir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review originally at Fantasy Book Critic

ANALYSIS: With any Tim Marquitz title, the reader should be ready to know a few things will be expected in the story:
a) It will be dark and most likely feature a grey protagonist.
b) The story will fast paced and twisted to say the least.
c) The world settings will be grim and foreboding.

So after reading almost of his previous titles, I was very excited to see him try his hand at sword and sorcery. This would be his slant on this excellent sub-genre and with Tim at the helm, one can never foretell how the story will end.

Witch Bane begins by introducing the reader to Sebastian who is a warlock and a teenage one at that. The land of Mynistiria is one wherein witches rule and one of the cornerstones of their power is that all male warlocks are to be executed and their blood to be utilized for nefarious purposes. Sebastian’s mother was a witch who tried to save him but to no avail. She failed and was murdered, her husband Darius rescued Sebastian and has trained him to avenge his mother. Sebastian’s journey will be a difficult one as not only will he have to control his power but also he will have to also account for the characters that his father and he come across.

Tim’s storytelling abilities come to the fore with this standalone effort. Combining action intrigue and plot twists, he manages to give us a revenge saga that might seem to be a straightforward story but is definitely more complex than it appears to be. There’s also the complication of the white witch and the person that she seeks. The witches’ council has their own problems to contend with as their power and status as rulers is being contested. There are further side plots to the story however the reader will have to find them out for themselves.

Firstly this story will be a treat for fans of David Gemmell, David Dalglish and R. A. Salvatore. The story has a brisk pace to it that keeps the reader unsettled and the plot twists come left and right to further entangle the plot threads that are complex to begin with. Characterization has been Tim’s forte and it is no different with Witch Bane, be it with a troubled teen like Sebastian or his withdrawn, silent father Darius, to the taciturn and deadly Victor or the unsuspecting, sheltered Emerald. Each character has their own quirks and the reader will have to decide which among them is the true victim.

This story while being a revenge drama also has shades of being a thriller. There’s plenty of action and intrigue. Tim Marquitz knows how to tell an epic story and with this one, he manages to narrow down the focus to a few characters. The epicness of this tale is quite understated and this story is all about one young lad’s search for revenge. He’s however bereft of the wiles that one gains with experience and Darius struggles to help him gain that edge which will help him in his quest. The story is mainly about Sebastian trying to find out who he is exactly and at the same time trying to find and kill the witches that have murdered his mother. This book can thought of to be a coming-of-age story but its one that’s dark and violent as one of Quentin Tarantino’s movies.

Sebastian as a character is the most endearing of the lot of POV characters as he’s been trained for revenge and revenge only. He doesn’t really know about foibles of mankind. He soon learns that not every issue is black and white and there are more than two sides to every issue/problem. The book also has another protagonist Emerald who discovers the life beyond her ivory walls and the story is mainly about the growth of these two. The story however doesn’t give us much time to dwell on these two characters as things keep on happening and we are taken to the visceral and unsettling climax. Tim has another ace up to his sleeve as he puts in a final twist and then ups the ante in the epilogue as well.

This book is a dark fantasy thriller and one that excels on the strengths of the author. This book has a few downsides in relation to the type of being story told. It doesn’t give the characters enough time or space to develop. The story being on the shorter side, the readers get a short brutal look into the lives of these characters and with many of them meeting gruesome ends. It feels as if we only get to know them partly. With the story’s length being what it is, readers wanting a deeper nuanced storyline might not find it entirely to their liking. There’s also the question of world building and in this case, it's on the lighter side and therefore the reader will get a world that appears to be more but its secrets might be revealed in future books (if any).

CONCLUSION: Witch Bane is a dark story; it combines themes of revenge with that of a coming of age storyline. Tim Marquitz deftly handles these themes and gives the reader another quick-paced, twisted story about a boy who is learning to be a man and also avenge his mother’s death. Such a theme is very similar to that of Harry Potter books however this is far away from that memorable tale. Witch Bane is for those that like their tales darker, heroes gray and outcomes ambivalent. Read this book if you like to be thrilled and surprised.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Witch Bane by Tim Marquitz is an extremely fast paced dark fantasy. Sebastian is a young warlock who is warrior trained through and through but is lacking in his magical education. This is a story of his coming of age. His desire for revenge on the death of his mother. It is his attempts to show his legendary general of a father just how far he has come as a man and a killer.



"Get used to it boy. This is what warriors do."



The plot of Witch Bane centers around the struggle between the resistance and the council. The Witches rule the land and seek out the deaths of all male warlocks. Sebastian finds himself entrenched in the center of this massive conflict. Marquitz makes this book work by making our young hero both flawed and also likable. His father Darius, and Victor are also fantastic characters. The world building is fantastic. The magic and sword fighting portrayed is awesome.

The book is action packed and blazingly fast paced. I couldn't put it down. I am a huge fan of Tim Marquitz and love his Urban Fantasy novels. This one is straight up fantasy and it works. I really hope that this is not the end for this world and for our young protagonist. Witch Bane is clearly a standalone novel, but the world created within deserves to have more.

Freaking fun..

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Tim Marquitz's The Blood War Trilogy, a grimdark fantasy series following an alliance of loosely-allied nations against a genocidal army of magic-wielding wolfmen. I also loved his grimdark apocalypse novel, Dirge, which followed a master thief charged with stealing a mystical artifact during a zombie apocalypse. So, I was interested in what his latest fantasy novel would be like and whether it would live up to the example set by previous volumes.

So, does it?

Yes, mostly.

Witch Bane follows the adventures of Sebastian and his father Darius. Sebastian is one of the few warlocks left in the world after the Witches' Council discovered they could achieve immortality by bathing in the blood of their male associates. Now one of a hated minority, Sebastian has been trained by his father to seek out and kill the Witches Council to avenge both his mother as well as liberate the land from their tyranny. Along the way, he'll encounter the resistance against the witches as well as an old enemy of his father who may or may not now be an ally.

The plot of an evil empire and the plucky rebels against it could have been cliche, especially given Sebastian's status as one of the last warlocks in the world, but Tim Marquitz manages to make it interesting by portraying the resistance as arguably no better than the empire. By making Sebastian and Darius outsiders to the struggle against the Witches' Council, we get a slightly more nuanced story. There's also the fact Victor and his lover Emerald are people who could very well be the heroes of their own story but who Darius hates for their pasts together.

At the end of the day, Witch Bane is still mostly a straightforward story of good versus evil. The Witches are horrifically bad, murdering their own male children for immortality, and Sebastian is a noble good-hearted soul who is only vaguely tempted by the resistance offering him hot and cold running hookers among other offers. There's even a case where Sebastian is required to make a moral choice of immense difficulty where he chooses to do the "right" thing where many of us would choose the opposite.

As a big fan of moral ambiguity in fantasy, this was kind of off-putting and I would have appreciated the protagonists having more in the way of flaws. Luke Skywalker, at least, was immature and hot-headed during the majority of the trilogy. Sebastian manages to get over that flaw in the opening chapters.

Despite this, I give props to Tim Marquitz for doing something very few authors have the courage to do and that's write a "one and done" story. By the end of Witch Bane, Sebastian's story is over and the majority of the plot threads are resolved. There's a hook at the end for a possible future story but I'm confident in saying that it may well just be viewed as indicating the universe will continue on, with or without Sebastian.

Tim Marquitz is a master of fantasy action as always with the book possessing many wonderful fight scenes that use a combination of both magic as well as sword techniques. These are some of the most entertaining parts of the book and show rather tell why Sebastian is a threat to the witches' dominion.

In conclusion, this is a fun epic fantasy novel but not a terribly deep one. Still, Tim Marquitz at his mid-level is better than most writers at their best. The plot is classic, the action fun, and the moral conundrums enjoyable even if everything is a bit too familiar for my tastes.

8/10

[Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review here.

[Cheryl Aucamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing read!!!

This is a story of witches -with a difference.
An easy read, wonderful characters (without droning on about the whys and wherefores).

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dark fantasy story, Witch Bane, takes place in the troubled realm of Mynistiria. Beginning in a scramble, Red Guard soldiers disembark from an airborne transport, a hover ship that is being powered by harnessed griffons. Watching nearby from behind trees, young Sebastian and mature Darius witness Red Guard stormtroopers mercilessly attack a caravan of refugees. Women or children, this onslaught persists.



Darius warns Sebastian to keep his head, but Sebastian the warlock rushes from cover to heroically save the surviving members of the caravan. Little did Sebastian foresee this charitable act would conscript him officially into the civil war. It didn’t matter; destiny said he was going there anyway.



Not far in the forest, travels Emerald, a young girl who is pregnant. She is being escorted through the woods by a couple mercenaries seeking out the renegade witch, Elizabeth Bourne. Emerald, bearing a boy in possession of magical powers---she is expecting a warlock. An abomination in the eyes of the law, the baby would be killed at birth if she is caught. Her only hope it to reach Elizabeth Bourne, the leader of the resistance against the corrupt governing matriarchy of witches.



I liked the complexity of this story's build. Nice dark theme too. Witch Bane isn’t written for sissies. If you’re afraid of blood, Witch Bane is a shower. The story starts on a bang and rarely slows down enough for the reader to catch their breath. If you’ve read any other Tim Marquitz story, then you know these are signature ingredients to his storytelling. Witch Bane doesn’t mess around. Furious, fast-paced, and visceral action is commonplace.

To read more-- http://jakeelliotfiction.com/2014/08/...

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Witch Bane is a good novel, though it does have a few issues. I liked the premise. A revenge tale always promises a fun read, and it certainly was that. In this case, Sebastion, a warlock, has made it his mission to kill all the witches who betrayed and killed his mother. At 250ish pages, this is a fast and action-packed book. There always seems to be a fight going on, which is both good (gratuitous violence!) and bad. The bad is that I thought this negatively impacted character development. To me, Sebastion and the others are rather one dimensional characters. I understand why it was written this way, as the story takes place over a short period of time, but I think that there were some missed opportunities. Towards the end, there is certainly some growth and that drew me in more but it was too late.

Overall, I enjoyed the read and plan of checking out some other Marquitz novels. I would definitely check out a sequel in this universe as I think the stage has been set well and further novels can only improve on what was done here.

[Alice Bridgwater · Rating 2 out of 5]

niet, non mi è piaciuto.
la storia non è autoconclusiva, quindi richiede la lettura di un seguito che non ho alcuna intenzione di leggere.
il protagonista è arrogantello e, per grazia ricevuta, potente e superaddestrato nonostante sia cresciuto da solo col padre, che di magia non sa un tubo.
ammazza un avversario in teoria molto più forte di lui ma l'autore non spiega da dove gli venga questa forza insperata.
è un cretino che attacca i nemici perchè non riesce a trattenere la sua furia anche quando in realtà è una scelta tatticamente mooooolto svantaggiosa.
la magia sembra potentissima ma alla fine non fanno altro che spararsi palle di fuoco O_o
il regno in cui il tutto ha lugo sembra piccolissimo: truppe e uomini si spostano dalla capitale agli estremi del regno in un battito di ciglia...

fragile, molto fragile.
caratterizzazione personaggi: così così
descrizione mondo e magia: ZERO
solidità trama: scarsa

[Bookwyrm Speaks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what I was getting when I got this, only that it looked interesting. It was great, plain and simple. Tim Marquitz's descriptions of places, people and things is exceptional. He paints a picture in your mind, and you feel your right in the thick of the action. You can hear the creak of the leather in armor, the clang of arms, she screams of men and the screeches of the Griffins. you understand the characters motivations, and can he ever write some vile villains and some flawed heroes. The ending was not what I expected, but it still worked in context to the book. I would recommend this to fans of Anthony Ryan, Jennifer Roberson and Brian Stavely.

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this it worked well as a stand alone story and there are just not enough of those in my opinion. I thought the slower build up worked well and when the action starts it really starts, fast furious and you just zip through these chapters.
Hopefully Tim will pen a few more stand alone books like this as they just make for good reading without having to worry about how many books are in the series.

[Alpha_stigma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. I enjoyed the depth in the characters, not many were 2d they all had reasons for their actions not solely for the reason of advancing the plot. My only real complaint is that the magic system wasn't explained and there was only a few uses for magic. Fire, the sigils, and the shadow are the main ones I recall.

[Darren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The characters weren't as deep is I liked.

[Vaughan King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok. Some of the timing was a bit unbelievable, like getting from one area to the next. Lots of action, and magic.Probably will read the coming sequel...

[Ken Selvia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the Demon Squad series so I thought I would give this series a chance. Narration was good, but story just didn't interest me, and there was none of the irreverent, wise-ass patter often found in Demon Squad. Even the battle scenes were dull. It really seemed like this was written by a different author.