Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Release Date: October 3, 2023
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Historical
Night of the Witch, by co-authors Sara Raasch and Beth Revis, is the first installment in what appears to be a duology called Witch and Hunter. Even though this is a fantasy, it's set in a world that reflects our own and it takes place in the Holy Roman Empire which means that a lot of history is strewn across the book. The story is fictionally based on real events that happened in Germany (1591) and later spread across Europe before finding a way to the Salem Witch Trials in what will become America. The story is told in a dual points-of-view.
The only survivor of a brutal attack on her coven in Birresborn where she watched her mother and entire cover slaughter, she’s determined to bring the hexenjägers—zealot witch hunters—to justice for the lives they ended. She also has to make up for a fatal error which I will not spoil. Read the book! Otto is a hexenjäger—but that’s just his cover. He and his sister, Hilde, have been planning their move against the witch hunters for 10 years as a way to avenge their mother, who was wrongfully burned by their father as a witch.
When Otto and Hilde take the first step in
their bid to destroy the hexenjägers from within, Fritzi mistakes Hilde
for an innocent victim, and her errant protection spell backfires,
casting Hilde into the magical ether (The Black Forest) and painting Fritzi as an
undeniable witch. Otto is forced to arrest her, his plan for revenge in
tatters and his sister missing, while Fritzi is now a prisoner of the
very organization she fears most. But after a time, Otto realizes that Fritzi may be his key to rescuing hundreds of people arrested for being witches.
Unwilling to trust each other, Fritzi and Otto can’t deny they have a common enemy. An enemy that is as familiar to Fritzi, as her own face. They team up to stop the hexenjägers and find Hilde. Their quest takes them from the oldest city in Germany to the heart of the Black Forest, through hidden aqueducts to magic wellsprings. As truths come to light and trust shifts, Fritzi and Otto uncover a far more horrifying plot at the center of the hexenjäger attacks . . . but their own growing feelings for each other may be the most powerful magic of all.
*Thoughts*
While the story is entertaining, the final
chapters of this book are the most revealing and leads to a stunning,
but a wholly not unexpected ending since this is a duology. For years, Fritzi ignored the voice in her head telling her to let go and accept her destiny as a witch who uses wild magic. It isn't until she finds out that her own brother, Dieter Kirch, who has been killing innocent people to gain power for years, that she understands the severity of her own actions that led to her coven's ending. It is also at this point that she and Otto team up to become Warrior and Champion. It was absolutely a good idea to alternate narratives to fill in the blanks as each character is struggling to learn how to deal, and maybe, love the other. I understand that the next book comes out in 2024, but I will be patient in finding out how Fritzi, and Otto deal with what's coming for them.
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