Book: Season of the Witch, by Natasha Mostert

Book: Season of the Witch, by Natasha Mostert

When Shane and I were dating, we finished almost evening out at the Barnes and Noble, browsing through books. I am happy to say that this tradition has continued. Since we are not blessed with lots and lots of willing babysitters just waiting for us to go on a date, these nights only happen a few times a year, so I use them to get ideas for reading for the next few months. I always find a pen and a copy of the current Discover Great New Writers brochure and I begin my search. I rarely buy any books, but make note of the name & author and then put them on my list of books on the county library website. This past July Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert caught my attention. I was pleased to see when I placed a hold for the book that it had multiple copies of the book AND that all of them were currently checked out. There weren’t too many copies, but enough that I didn’t have to wait too long.

The premise of the book is this: Gabriel is an information thief, who can also use telepathic skills to read the minds of others, called in the book “remote viewing.” His talents have been used in the past to find victims of crimes, so when an ex-girlfriend’s stepson (Robert) disappears mysteriously, she asks Gabriel to use his ability to find Robert. Gabriel is able to view Robert’s last moments of life, where a beautiful but masked woman guides him through a house with millions of doors, and then, when he fails to keep the correct order of the doors, the woman drowns him. Gabriel is able to meet both the woman in the memory and her sister, but he is unable to determine which sister is the killer. Using techno-savvy methods, he hacks into the sisters’ computer, and reads a daily diary of one of the women. He falls in love with the writer, but is unable to determine who she is, but knows that the writer is not the killer through clues that she leaves in her writings. Meanwhile, his fascination with the sisters in real life grows as he spends more and more time with them, and he loses his focus of trying to find Robert’s killer in favor of discovering the author of the diary. The danger (and excitement) grows when Gabriel discovers that one of the sisters is also a remote viewer; however, her talent includes the ability to harm those minds that she reads, and Gabriel finds himself, his friends, and the sister that he loves at her mercy.

Using principles alchemy, magic, and witchcraft, Season of the Witch is an interesting read. I thought that the author could have gone more into depth with many aspects of the book, and what should have been the climax of the book was rather more of an anticlimax. Her strengths were in describing the sisters, their similarities and differences, and producing a mental tennis match of trying to discover who was the writer and who was the killer. I loved reading the diary entries; the writers voice was witty, yet mysterious, and each entry ended the same, with the words “I must meditate on my name.” It reminded me a bit of Eragon, where the power of knowing another’s true name gave you power over them. It was, though, entertaining and didn’t require too much thought to keep up with the story. I kept thinking that some devices that she used were too tenuous to be believable, or just completely unnecessary. But, to be fair to the book, I think for me any book I read for the next bit will be overshadowed by Harry Potter and the emotional let-down of that series being over. If I were to rate this book, it would be a 6.5 or a 7. Not one that I would buy, or read again, but it entertained all the same.