A review by turrean
The Line by J. D. Horn
3.0
Got this pre-pub through the "Kindle First" program.
Mercy is an apparently ordinary person born to a powerful family of witches. Her twin sister has all the power, charisma, and looks. The tyrannical witch who has been the head of their clan for decades dies in uncanny circumstances; a few sexy but boorish men hover around the two sisters; and an astonishing number of family secrets come to light in the month-long span of the book. No one is who they seem to be, and Mercy has to come to grips it all.
The Savannah setting was great. The heat, the tourists, the descriptions of several monuments and parks all added to a clear sense of place. In particular, the scene set near the old Candler Hospital was eerily well-detailed.
The cast of characters was large; I can see the author is making a run at a series, so this is the book in which he establishes everybody's backstory. Over the course of the novel, some shocking revelations come to light which completely change our understanding of the people in Mercy's life.
Several of them do flip back and forth between good and evil in a way I found pretty unconvincing. (One does a complete journey from Glinda to Wicked Witch and back again twice. Would you like some sweet tea? And a knife in your heart?) I also found the selection of the successor to the powerful "anchor" position baffling. The author dedicates quite a bit of time describing the importance of the process to the witches involved. Yet when the magical selection yields a wildly unconventional candidate for the job, everyone kind of throws up their hands and says, "Probably just a mistake. We'll ignore it," and goes on as if everything had proceeded as expected.
These are safely minor points, though. Mercy is a complete innocent when it comes to dealing with her Machiavellian family; the reader learns along with her. The characters were refreshingly complex, the setting was a treat, and woohoo! a love triangle (quadrangle?) with no vampires or werewolves. I'll be back for the next book.
Mercy is an apparently ordinary person born to a powerful family of witches. Her twin sister has all the power, charisma, and looks. The tyrannical witch who has been the head of their clan for decades dies in uncanny circumstances; a few sexy but boorish men hover around the two sisters; and an astonishing number of family secrets come to light in the month-long span of the book. No one is who they seem to be, and Mercy has to come to grips it all.
The Savannah setting was great. The heat, the tourists, the descriptions of several monuments and parks all added to a clear sense of place. In particular, the scene set near the old Candler Hospital was eerily well-detailed.
The cast of characters was large; I can see the author is making a run at a series, so this is the book in which he establishes everybody's backstory. Over the course of the novel, some shocking revelations come to light which completely change our understanding of the people in Mercy's life.
Several of them do flip back and forth between good and evil in a way I found pretty unconvincing. (One does a complete journey from Glinda to Wicked Witch and back again twice. Would you like some sweet tea? And a knife in your heart?) I also found the selection of the successor to the powerful "anchor" position baffling. The author dedicates quite a bit of time describing the importance of the process to the witches involved. Yet when the magical selection yields a wildly unconventional candidate for the job, everyone kind of throws up their hands and says, "Probably just a mistake. We'll ignore it," and goes on as if everything had proceeded as expected.
These are safely minor points, though. Mercy is a complete innocent when it comes to dealing with her Machiavellian family; the reader learns along with her. The characters were refreshingly complex, the setting was a treat, and woohoo! a love triangle (quadrangle?) with no vampires or werewolves. I'll be back for the next book.