Title: The Witch Who Came in from the Cold
Author(s): Lindsay Stone, Max Gladstone, Cassandra Rose Clarke, Ian Tregillis, and Michael Swanwick
Series Status: #1.1-1.13 in The Witch Who Came in from the Cold series
# of pages: 614
My rating: 3.5/5 stars
Spies and sorcerers face off during the Cold War, with the fate of the world in balance in this print edition of a hugely popular serial novel from five award-winning and critically acclaimed authors.
The Cold War rages in back rooms and dark alleys of 1970s Prague as spies and sorcerers battle for home and country. The fate of the East and the West hangs in the balance right along the Iron Curtain—and crackling beneath the surface is a vein of magic that is waiting to be tapped.
This series is so unique because I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of an urban fantasy that takes place in the Cold War, much less one with this kind of magic system.
While I did enjoy this book overall and managed to get pretty hooked into the story there were some things that I took issue with. The first being that I felt like the magic system was underdeveloped. I enjoyed the idea and thought it was pretty unique but I wish there was more development into the specifics of the magic, especially with the charms that are so wildly used throughout. I also wish that the two opposing parties within the system had more development other than see a very basic view of their opposing fronts.
I did love the characters though. I think that even though there was a larger number of main characters they all still received a good amount of development and some of my favorite scenes are the ones where opposing characters interact and you get to see these two characters battle it out.
Then there’s the plot which I enjoyed because of the setting and idea of this overlying plot happening in the middle of the Cold War; however, I found that the plot lacked an overarching storyline. The story did come to an arc but it felt like it was placed in later to the series than in an earlier place. This could be because these seemed to have been originally published as installations but I still found it hard to be hooked on the plot when the beginning didn’t appear to have any main plot going on.
Overall I really enjoyed this book and would definitely read the next in the series since this seemed like a good setup for further installations.
3.5/5 stars
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