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.