Witchy Kingdom

Witchy Eye #3

by D.J. Butler

DRAGON AWARD NOMINATED SERIES. Both previous entries in the Witchy War series, Witchy Eye and Witchy Winter , were nominated for best alternate history novel at the Dragon Awards.

SEASON OF THE WITCH

An encounter with her father’s goddess has not turned out to be the end for Sarah Elytharias Penn. Now, with the Imperial fist teightend around her city and the beastkind of the Heron King ravaging across the river, she must pull off a feat her powerful father never accomplished—access the power of the Serpent Throne itself. To complicate her efforts, Cahokia’s Metropolitan, a beloved and charismatic priest who despises the goddess as a demon, returns from a long pilgrimage and attempts to finalize the Wisdom-eradicating reform that dogged Sarah’s father when he was king.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s brother Nathaniel and her brilliant but erratic servant Jacob Hop find their steps dogged by the Emperor’s Machiavel, Temple Franklin, as they hunt in New Amsterdam for the third Elytharias sibling. Isaiah Wilkes, having failed to awaken the Emperor by reminding him of his esoteric obligations, now travels north in disguise to seek other allies to stand against the destroying storm of the reign of Simon Sword. Chigozie Ukwu, the Shepherd of the Still Waters, finds his peaceful flock threatened and pressed into a dangerous mission in the service of Cahokia’s wild sister city Zomas, while his brother, the Vodun houngan Etienne Ukwu, pushes toward a final showdown with the mameluke assassins of the Chevalier of New Orleans.

Praise for Witchy Winter :
“Butler follows Witchy Eye with a satisfying second tale of a magic-filled early America. . . . Deep and old magic influences both places and characters, and the story is tightly focused on the determined Sarah . . . Fans of epic and alternate historical fantasy will savor this tale of witchery and intrigue.”— Publishers Weekly

"For readers who love history-based fantasy, steampunk, or urban fantasy. . . this series that gives the genre a new twist."— Booklist

Praise for Witchy Eye and D.J.
“… you can’t stop yourself from taking another bite…and another…and another….I didn’t want to stop reading…. Kudos!”—R.A. Salvatore

“Excellent book. I am impressed by the creativity and the depth of the world building. Dave Butler is a great storyteller.”—Larry Correia

“ Witchy Eye is an intricate and imaginative alternate history with a cast of characters and quirky situations that would make a Dickens novel proud.” —Kevin J. Anderson

"Butler’s fantasy is by turns sardonic and lighthearted; ghoulish shadows claw into the most remote areas and heroism bursts out of the most unlikely people. Sarah is the epitome of the downtrodden hero who refuses to give up until she gets what she needs, and her story will appeal to fantasy readers of all stripes."— Publishers Weekly

"David's a pro storyteller, and you're in for a great ride."—Larry Dixon

"… a fascinating, grittily-flavored world of living legends. Hurry up and write the next one, Dave."—Cat Rambo

"This is enchanting! I'd love to see more."—Mercedes Lackey

“Goblin Market meets Magical Musketpunk... A great ride that also manages to cover some serious cultural terrain.” —Charles E. Gannon

" Witchy Eye is a brilliant blend of historical acumen and imagination, a tour-de-force that is at once full of surprises and ultimately heart-warming. This is your chance to discover one of the finest new stars writing today!"–David Farland

“A gritty, engrossing mash-up of history, fantasy, and magic. Desperate characters careen from plot twist to plot twist until few are left standing.”—Mario Acevedo

"Captivating characters. Superb world-building. Awesome magic. Butler fuses fantasy and history effortlessly, creating a fascinating new American epic. Not to be missed!"—Christopher Husberg

"[A] unique alternative-history that is heavily influence by urban and traditional fantasy and steeped in the folklore of the Appalachians. . . . Fans of urban fantasy looking to take a chance on something with a twist on a historical setting may find this novel worth their time."— Booklist

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historical Fantasy

624 pages, Hardcover

First published August 6, 2019

About the author

D.J. Butler (Dave) is a novelist living in the Rocky Mountain west. His training is in law, and he worked as a securities lawyer at a major international firm and inhouse at two multinational semiconductor manufacturers before taking up writing fiction. He is a lover of language and languages, a guitarist and self-recorder, and a serious reader. He is married to a powerful and clever novelist and together they have three devious children.

Dave is published by Baen, Knopf, and WordFire Press. He writes adventure fiction for all ages. He writes for young readers under the name Dave Butler: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Read about D.J. Butler’s writing projects at http://davidjohnbutler.com.

Reviews

[Daniel Shellenbarger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I slogged through to the end, believing that the series would end here, and what do I find? IT'S NOT A TRILOGY, DAMNIT! Too bad.

As a disclaimer, I'll say that between reading portions of this book, I read two FAR superior high fantasy books (Chris Wooding's The Ember Blade and Brent Weeks' The Burning White) and there's no question that this comparison did this book no favors as it felt like I was going from genius to frustrating mundanity.

In short, the alternate history is shoddy (admittedly, DJ Butler's central ideas have always been off-the-wall out there, but with each additional book, he's done nothing to shore them up with world-development to explain the "hows" and "whys" of his divergent historical record, instead he just keeps making it crazier) and the initial interesting ideas of the first book aren't developed in any way that makes the world actually make sense, it is full of anachronisms indicative of poor research (Youngstown, for instance, which is mentioned repeatedly in these books DIDN'T EXIST in 1815 and it was named after the guy who established it), and name-dropping that just doesn't fit the EXTREME degree of its changes to the timeline. I initially wrote a prolonged diatribe about this but decided that it wasn't worth it (for instance, No Reformation=No Dutch Protestant Rebellion against Spain=No Dutch National Identity/No Dutch Commercial Empire=No New Netherlands (this is just a single example, frankly if you get rid of the Protestant Reformation then the entire course of European history after the 15th century shouldn't be ANYTHING like our timeline, and if you add in that there's a race of pseudo-elves that also lived in Europe at that time, well...)) since most people would assume I'm nit-picking (I'm not, a good alternate history story needs to follow through on its ideas, otherwise it's premise will feel artificial) and so here we are. If you want to make something like this work, you need to be more careful about containing your changes and your name-dropping. That's why the early Temeraire books were great and the later ones were stupid, and Butler has fallen into a similar trap (admittedly, his books were never as good as the first few Temeraire books, but I digress).

The fantasy element is slightly better, in that Butler has a firm idea of his magical systems and is decent as describing them, but frankly, they get so deep into masonic, voodoo, and wiccan stuff that I started just skimming any section that went deep into the magic because it was obtuse and frankly unhealthily obsessed with the occult.

The less said of this book's atrocious theology the better... unlike its predecessors it can't find a good balance between advancing its crazy fictional religion and not insulting real world religions.

The story is a mess: it's a bloated and muddled middle book with a plot that's running in circles for the most part and most of the characters don't really have an arc (or have much to do with each others' stories) and seem to do things for reasons that they themselves don't understand and few things are resolved, my favorite character was hardly in the book and several characters became far less interesting over the course of this book (First and foremost, William Lee, who's gone from being an interesting tortured but sympathetic character to being just a complete a-hole who I think we're supposed to like, but always made me cringe whenever he was on the page). The Point-of-View shifts rapidly within chapters, often paragraph to paragraph and with little effort to keep the reader informed of where they are and who they're following (particularly in the first quarter of the book, which I found insanely frustrating). Subplots are half-developed or thrown at the reader out of nowhere and minor characters suddenly change or become immensely important for reasons that seem confusing at best. In essence, everything that DJ Butler did wrong in Witchy Winter, he does even worse here, and while there were certainly numerous points where I started to get into the book, every time I felt like I was getting into the flow of the story, the author would do something stupid to break up his own narrative and not only make it frustrating to progress but actually emphasize the poorer qualities of his world-building and character-development. I can buy into (and even love) a crazy story if it's confidently and intelligently told but this is like listening to the ramblings of a drunk who can't keep on topic for more than two paragraphs.

I will say that DJ Butler is still a good writer in general: his imagination is impressive, his descriptive abilities are stunning, and his dialect writing is generally quite good, but those are pretty much the only reasons that I'm not dropping this below 3 stars. Sadly, I will not find out how this story ends, but if a book series starts to really tick you off, it's better to just let it go, and that's where I'm at with this one. It's a shame, because I really liked Witchy Eye.

[Felix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this a 4 star mainly on the atmosphere Butler builds. I love the descriptions - he evokes a incredible visionary world that should of been.

[Sayomara Vesper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall the book is fine.

Much with the last book it feels like much to many thanks things are going on in to many places. While these threads to come together much better than Witchy Winter its still all over the places.

The Good.
Character work very solid. There is a realness to each character a struggle and progress. It might be saying to much that they grow but they process and move forward.

World building is good. The world Mr. Butler is a interesting place to walk around it. While we see very little you get the sense much is going on.

The less good
The climax of the book happens over the course of many chapters and much build up with Sarah making a mostly meaningless trip to Snake Temple from the end of the first book. Its played as a mystery but there is not really anything for the reader to figure out over than much long and frankly boring scenes of people trying to figure out what Sarah should do. Think about a movie with a maze in it. And now at every turn there needs to LOTS of talking about what to do. All the while a huge battle is going on outside. The two played against each other it meant to create drama but it takes away the drama. To say nothing of all the other ships away from the central battle which further water down the drama.

Having killed over some of to many Points of View we have to bring them back. It just doesn't work from action and drama prospective.

Time
Time is also an issue because events are lined up in away to create drama getting to the climax of the novel all at the same time. But often events are off set by weeks or months see the events with Merciful events taking place over weeks. Vs The Final battle events taking place over a few days.

I feel a sleep during the climax of the book so my prospective is painted by that. Not a bad book but also not a book I feel I'll ever revisit unless I'm in need of a nap.

[Danube · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars - An unfocused mess of a book jumping rapidly between POVs and inventing dull new storylines instead of wrapping the story up. I don’t understand why this book needed to exist. It felt like a filler, uncessary and not bringing any interesting new development. I hope the fourth book delivers a satisfying conclusion.

[Henry Lazarus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nineteenth century America was harsh and brutal. D. J. Butler’s seven kingdoms is much harsher with beastkind, walking dead, and all sorts of magics and gods. Sarah has made her way to the Witchy Kingdom (hard from Baen) where the Serpent throne sits in the city built in the huge mounds in Ohio, Cohokia. Unfortunately it is under siege by imperial forces, beastmen, and the necromancer Robert Hooke. While her brother Nathaniel hunts for their captured sister Margarida, she has to ascend to the Serpent Throne through a magical ritual which is unknown to the living, but her dead father might have a clue. This is an interesting look at religion, if all religious were provable and provided magic to their believers. More to come.Review printed by Philadelphia Free Press

[Micheal Boudreaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Thrill to the End

It is fair to say that every new book in this series is an improvement over what came before - as the Witchy world is unveiled more and more, Butler flexes his writing chops to deliver grander and more ferocious battles, deeper and more soul-wretching stakes, while retaining the little moments of humanity that makes his characters feel so visceral and relatable even in the midst of Beastmen raids, rides across the spirit plains, or treks into the heart of Eden itself.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
It's not the first instalment in this series so it could be I lost something but I had no issue in understanding the plot and the characters.
I liked the amazing world building, the well written cast of characters and the plot that flow.
I look forward to reading the next instalment in this series.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Mary Beene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This whole series has kept me going and I started book 4 as soon as I finished book 3, even though it was 2 am. It's complicated, with lots of characters and can be somewhat hard to keep up with, but the story is gripping and I'm willing to work a little to get there at the end. This book especially wrapped up many loose threads at the end and sets a great stage for what comes next.

[Niels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book continues D.J. Butler's epic vision of a New World that never existed where magic, monsters and gods do battle among the many nations of the American continent. You will find Aztec warriors and Yankee Necromancers among the pages of this epic series.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

Butler weaves together the many threads from the first two books into an amazing tapestry. It's a triumph of good vs evil, but brilliant done and there's lots left to explore! Looking forward to Dave's next trip to Cahokia.

[Graham Bradley]

Marking as read for now, but no rating because I need to go back and reread the first two so I can remember all the little side details. There is a LOT going on in this book.