Review: A Witch Called Red by Sami Valentine
A Witch Called Red by Sami Valentine
Valentine has set up an interesting backdrop to this novel that was probably inspired by the vampire character, Angel, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Angel killed a gypsy, her father cursed him by restoring his soul so that he could feel the guilt of decades of his horrific actions. In A Witch Called Red, the man who restored the vampires’ souls publicized how to do it so that now, a significant percentage of vampires are “handicapped” with genuine human emotions. It’s a fascinating, and as far as I know unique, setting.
The witch of the title is an amnesiac who is found by a vampire hunter after apparently surviving a vampire attack. Discovering her past is a significant motivating factor for Red that is made more complicated by her strong resemblance to a woman many of the vampires in the story knew a century earlier. We don’t get total satisfaction here as the mystery of Red’s past is something clearly intended to be further explored in the next novel but many of these tantalizing clues captured my interest and made me eager to learn more.
The actual plot of this book is a murder mystery that quickly becomes enmeshed in complex vampire politics. I love well done politics and vampires with their centuries-long grudges really enrich a good political mystery. Valentine takes full advantage of these possibilities and it’s a major strength of the novel.
So this is a strong book with lots of actions and a good mystery forming its core, but I do have two complaints to register. First, the novel is at least twenty percent too long mostly because of endlessly chatty dialogue that didn’t do much to advance the plot. Second, there is a really unfortunate break with basic physics toward the end of the book—melting a bullet in flight doesn’t cause the molten metal to lose its forward momentum and drop straight to the ground. Other than these two things, A Witch Called Red, is a great opening to a new series and promises more excitement to come.
I received this book free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.
