Witchmark

CL Polk

Completed 9/2/2020, Reviewed 9/2/2020

5 stars

This one really gripped me.  I could not put it down.  I read most of it in one day, finally putting it down when I was getting a headache from being so tired and reading for so long.  It’s a fantasy with a mystery set in an alternative Victorian-like era.  Cars have just been introduced.  There are telephones, cameras, and gadgets that run on electricity-like “aether.”  There are mages, rich and powerful people who wield magic, and witches, poor and middle-class people who wield magic.  Mages remain hidden from the public and witches are persecuted.  And there are magical people from another dimension.  This book won the World Fantasy Award in 2019, and was nominated for a bunch of other awards, including the Lambda Literary Award.

Miles is a doctor and war hero who works in a veterans’ hospital.  He joined the army to get away from family of mages so he could pursue medicine.  The other reason he left was because his sister was a Stormsinger.  That requires his life to be bound to hers so she could draw on his magical power to perform her duties keeping terrible weather from the land.  As her Secondary, he would never be free to be a healer.  One day, a man named Tristan brings a dying man to the hospital.  The dying man says he’s been poisoned.  He knows Miles and his real name and the fact that he is magical.  Before he dies, he transfers all his power to Miles.  Tristan teams up with Miles to try to find out who killed the man, but the body disappears and there seems to be a cover-up.  In the meantime, Miles spends his time treating men from the front who claim that they have someone inside them who is trying to kill people.  All of this comes together into a mystery that’s far bigger than Miles ever imagined.

There’s a lot going on, but the author handles it really well, explaining everything through the investigations of Tristan and Miles.  There’s no exposition to slow the pace down.  The plot unravels at a good clip and never gets as complicated as my summary.  I thought the writing was well done, consisting mostly of action and realistic dialogue.  This isn’t a prosy book.  It’s fun, and tense, and kept me quickly turning the pages. 

Needless to say, the world-building was phenomenal.  The magic system was well thought out, as well as the prejudice against witches.  I was really impressed as more and more is revealed.  Particularly interesting was the sub-mystery of what was happening to all the souls of the people.  It turns out that none were going to “Solace” after death and the people from the other dimension, the Amarinthians (sp?), thought the people of this dimension had died out.

The characters were marvelous.  I really liked Miles as he tried to hide his magical abilities at the risk of being called a witch.  If he were, he’d be swept off to an asylum, never to live free again.  He also has to try to hide from his family, who thinks he died in the war.  Then he meets Tristan who is the most beautiful man he’s ever seen.  He tries not to be vulnerable, but falls in love with Tristan as they try to uncover the mysteries of the dead man and the veterans.  Tristan was a wonderful character as well.  He’s magical as well and offers to teach Miles how to hone some of his skills.  Particularly fun is how the two men are interrupted every time they are about to kiss.  Miles’ sister Grace also comes on the scene.  She can’t believe her brother is alive and tries to spend as much time with him as possible.  But then she has ulterior motives, which makes her a suspect in the mystery of the dead man. 

For a first novel, I thought this book was terrific.  Polk’s characters and world-building are superb.  I don’t always like mysteries, often getting lost or bored or both.  I’m definitely going to read the next book in the series.  And yes, while the story wraps up nicely, it leaves some things hanging for the next one.  I give this book five stars out of five because I couldn’t put it down, and am now having a hard time thinking about waiting a little bit before I read the next one.  I have so many other books to read, but I’ll probably get to the sequel, well, soon.