Well today is September 1st and it is Amber Argyle's release day for her debut young adult fantasy novel, Witch Song. I finished reading this just last night as I was able to purchase a Kindle version of it almost four weeks ahead of the release. When I asked Amber why it got released early, she indicated that there was a problem with people pirating the file which really surprised me. It's a topic I'd love to talk to Amber about one of these days. Maybe I'll get a chance when she goes to a signing scheduled in Layton, Utah (about twenty minutes from where I live) this September.As far as a debut fantasy novel goes, there are a few new things that I saw here which I thought refreshing. Her magic system deals a lot with plants. Witches rely on seeds and they use plants to do all kinds of crazy things. There's even a scene where she talks with a whale and I had flashbacks of the Superfriends and Aquaman telepathically controlling whales.
Anyway, the pacing and writing in the book is solid. Rhemelda Publishing did a bang up job with the formatting--it's excellent. The swoon-worthy male in this book is Joshen and he's the apple of Senna's eye as it were. My bone to pick here in their relationship is that there is a point almost in every chapter where Senna pushes Joshen melodramatically out of her life saying that it is too dangerous for him and that she could never live with herself if anything happened. He of course counters with..."but I'm sworn to protect you...don't push me away...Senna!" And pretty much that scene gets played over and over and over and over.
Then we have little characters like Pogg who really reminded me of Dobby the House Elf in the Harry Potter films. He lives on this island and fishes and fetches things, etc. I thought the character was entirely too cutesty, however, I'm not thirteen which is where I think this book's intended audience may lie.
The novel wraps up all plots cleanly. The climactic battle with the villain of the story and the protagonist was a speed bump as far as battles go...I was disappointed in that. I guess smacking each other around with plants can't really be all that impressive. And the way that Espen (the villain) got defeated kinda smacked of deus ex machina but really no more than Aslan going around and fixing everything.
All in all, I give this book four stars (out of five) because I'm not going to rate it with the eyes of a forty-year-old (which I am) who has read everything from Tolkien, to Eddings, to Martin, to Brooks, to Lewis, to Zelazny, to Gaiman, to Alexander, to Kurtz and blah blah blah. If you are an adult and have kids, buy this book for your kid to read. Or, buy it for yourself, if you are an adult that loves literature for teens. That is my recommendation.
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