Talisman

The Witch Who Came In From The Cold #2.6

by Fran Wilde, Ian Tregillis, Max Gladstone

The Cold War gets magical when spies brush shoulders with sorcerers in this genre-defying serial created by Lindsay Smith and Max Gladstone.

This is the 6th episode in the second season of The Witch Who Came In From The Cold, a 13-episode serial from Serial Box Publishing. This episode written by Fran Wilde.

The spies and sorcerers of Prague leave the shadows for the big Fight Night in Kazimir’s underground. Tanya seeks contact with Gabe while Nadia learns more about Van. Zerena goes shopping – and slumming.

Welcome to Prague, 1970: the epicenter in a Cold War of spies and sorcerers. The streets are a deadly chessboard on which the CIA and KGB make their moves, little dreaming that a deeper game is being played between the Consortium of Ice and the Acolytes of Flame, ancient factions of sorcery.

Genres: Urban Fantasy, Espionage

45 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Two-time Nebula Award-winner Fran Wilde has (so far) published nine novels, a poetry collection, and over 70 short stories for adults, teens, and kids. Her stories have been finalists for six Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, four Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards, and a Lodestar. They include her Nebula- and Compton Crook-winning debut novel Updraft, and her Nebula-winning, Best of NPR 2019, debut Middle Grade novel Riverland. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, Uncanny Magazine, and multiple years' best anthologies.

The Managing Editor for The Sunday Morning Transport, Fran teaches or has taught for schools including Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She writes nonfiction for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, and Tor.com. You can find her on Instagram, Bluesky, and at franwilde.net.

Reviews

[Amy Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the players in the same room at once. What could possibly go wrong? (or should that be, what could possibly go right?)

[Larou]

Almost halfway through the season, this is the guest author contribution. I've only known Fran Wilde as author of second-world Fantasy before, so this seemed a somewhat surprising choice, but it is obvious throughout the installment that the author was having lots of fun with this, and even appears to have some done research (or maybe just happens to know Prague well), going by the extensive name dropping of street and place names.

In short, another enjoyable episode, in a second season that so far I'm enjoying even more than the first: things come to a first crisis here as almost everyone of any relevance is converging at a boxing match, and complications are piled upon complications. Like in Season One, the plot is a mess but it seems a far more focused mess as the various intrigues actually are related to each other (even if most of the players are at this stage unaware of that). Utterly delightful.