Luanne G. Smith – Grey Patterson

This held up reasonably well as a story, and had some fun little twists to it. The hidden backstory got revealed at just the right pace, and really changed the tone of the latter half of the book, which I quite enjoyed. There was a bit more ‘monster movie’ to it prior to that, which doesn’t tend to be my favorite, but the action-adventure of it outweighed that long enough to carry me to the end.

The magic system was interesting; there were places where it felt like a hard magic system, but overall, I think it’s really a soft magic system, which contains the occasional regional hard magic system. The presence of a djinn with a wildly different set of powers, including “oh, I actually don’t care about the macguffin, that’s just, like, a normal thing for my people” felt a bit hilarious, honestly. The whole dramatic fight, a large part of World War I coming down to the negotiation about this rarity… and the representative from the middle east is like “oh, I thought you had something interesting to discuss after all this. Peace.” and just up and leaves. Excellent.

The only issue I had with the book was that it was trying to do the “normal people don’t know about magic” thing, but couldn’t actually decide on what level that was a thing. Like, everyone acknowledges superstition and the existence of hedgewitches… but the fact that the government is employing magic users for purposes of war is a deep secret that must be kept from the normals? It’s inconsistent with itself.

That said, since the book is almost entirely the magic users amongst other magic users, it’s not too much in your face, so it’s okay to read past it. Overall, a fun read; check it out.¹

This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩

“The Vine Witch”

Luanne G. Smith

I feel like I should write an individual recommendation of this book to some of my friends that work in the wine industry. To me, having absorbed a minimum of knowledge of the field via osmosis, it feels like the author knows what she’s talking about.

Something about the scale of this book felt really nice. There’s never a “for the sake of the world!” moment; the biggest thing that can go wrong is a crime goes unpunished and a historic vineyard goes out of business. It’s very personal. And the magic feels the same way—the biggest bit of magic anyone has, even historically, seen was a plague that nearly wiped out all the grapes in the valley. No apocalypse, just a local disaster. Small scale; personal. And it’s neat to see magic used not for magic’s sake, but for the sake of craft—not only the titular vine witch, someone who uses magic to help the vintage, but also bakers and brewers. I like seeing things like this, magic not as a “everything is the same but also magic is there!” but magic properly integrated into the world.

The biggest quibble I have with the book is where that integration broke down. Magic is so much a part of this world that having a character who denies its existence just feels… silly. There’s a whole set of laws! Nobody here is even remotely bothering to deny the existence of magic! It’s not a secret by any stretch, so why is it that the “man of science” must categorically deny magic exists? Really, there should be a whole thaumaturgy department at the university in the big city, studies of how magic integrates with natural law…

But that quibble fades over the course of the story, and I found myself quite enraptured by the end. I suspect this is one of many books I received as a “free with Prime” deal, which is almost certainly no longer on offer, but it’s still worth a read. Check it out.¹

This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩