"A Bronze-age matriarchal Witch society empowered by Hekate’s magic.

A god with a taste for Witch blood.

A battle for the future." 

This book starts abruptly, right in the thick of the action, and as a result it took me a moment to understand what exactly was happening but once I got the gist of the story, it was interesting. 

An ancient tribe of witches who have descended from Hekate and a once nomadic group of humans who become a thriving Bronze Age civilisation because of their worship of Moloch, battle with each other for supremacy and survival. The way the book ended hints at a sequel. 

My favourite characters were The Twins, Araja the Just and Araja the Demon, the first born of the witches and giants. They had sass, spunk and a sense of humour.

I received a digital ARC of the book from the publisher Sacred Consort Media and the author Mark Harris via NetGalley.

 

HEKATE'S RETURN begins with no preamble and ends abruptly. It is not a matter of jumping into the action or coming to a final conclusion but rather a seeming lack of planning on the part of the author. He seemed to want to tell a story, so he sat down, started writing then proceeded to wing it. The result is a mashup of historical eras combined with a hodgepodge of mythologies. I suppose if you know nothing about history, mythology, or religion, the book might work. The titular claim of being "A Deep History of Witchcraft" doesn’t fly. 

I found reading this book a chore. It never takes me ten days to read 361 pages. I read Stephen King's THE STAND, which comes in at somewhere between 1100 and 1400 pages depending on the edition, in a couple of days. Much of HEKATE'S RETURN just doesn't make much sense which forced me to re-read passages in an attempt to understand just what I was reading 

After finishing the book, I wondered if Harris was trying to write an allegory for our times — a childish authority figure, life in a bubble, and an outside force that can't make headway against the authoritarianism. I came to this possibility because the town within the bubble is Gehenna, and at the end reference is made specifically to Hell. 

I had high hopes for this book based on the sell copy. I was sorely disappointed and will not be reading more books in this series. 

Just the fact that this was set in the Bronze Age was such a breath of fresh air that it immediately bumped up my rating. 

The story follows both the more advanced Witches and the humans on the cusp of civilization. The juxtaposition between them was intriguing and while I felt that more could’ve been more done with the Witches’ past, the nomadic, tribal humanity was extra fascinating and made up for it.

The magic system was clean and simple, I enjoyed the worldbuilding and some of the characters maybe needed an extra layer, but then others had excellent arcs. My personal favorite were the Twins. It was a fairly quick read too, with smaller sections that made the story move fast without sacrificing the flow.

A great and refreshing debut that I recommend to anyone looking for something a little different.

Thank you to the author and Sacred Consort Media for requesting this review and sending me the advance copy.