“Waking the Witch” by Kelley Armstrong, Random House of Canada, 978-0-307-35759-5. To buy the book, click here.

Plot Synopsis: The new novel in Kelley Armstrong’s bestselling Women of the Otherworld series showcases the fascinating Savannah Levine, a powerful young witch with a rebellious past and a troublesome heritage. The orphaned daughter of a sorcerer and a half-demon, Savannah is a terrifyingly powerful young witch who has never been able to resist the chance to throw her magical weight around. But at twenty-one she knows she needs to grow up and prove to her guardians, Paige and Lucas, that she can be a responsible member of their supernatural detective agency. So she jumps at the chance to fly solo, investigating the mysterious deaths of three young women in a nearby factory town, as a favour to one of the agency’s associates. At first glance, the murders look garden-variety human, but on closer inspection signs point to otherworldly stakes. Soon Savannah is in over her head. She’s run off the road and nearly killed, haunted by a mystery stalker and freaked out when the brother of one of the dead women is murdered when he tries to investigate the crime. To complicate things, something weird is happening to her powers. Pitted against shamans, demons, a voodoo-inflected cult and garden-variety goons, Savannah has to fight to ensure her first case isn’t her last. And she also has to ask for help, perhaps the hardest lesson she’s ever had to learn.

Review: “Waking the Witch” marks the eleventh in the best-selling Otherworld series by famed Canadian urban fantasy writer Kelley Armstrong. This book chronicles the adventures of half-demon half-witch Savannah, who has been tasked with watching over her guardian Paige’s private investigations firm while she’s away with partner Lucas.

While there, Savannah takes a triple murder case that has supernatural connections, and dangerous situations ensue in which she gets more than she bargained for and finds out that she isn’t as all-powerful as she may have thought.
Along the way, she meets a half-demon PI, Jason, who has worked previously with Lucas, so she trusts that he’s legitimate–and he turns up in her iPhone database as verified. Yup, witches and private investigations agencies use iPhone databases, which is a nice touch of the modern world. Savannah is a likeable protagonist, even to those who haven’t been following her story from her first introduction into the Otherworld books as the daughter of Eve Levine, an enormously powerful witch.

At first, Savannah starts to suspect that the murders, all of young women, were part of an elaborate Satanic ritual, and she meets an annoyingly precocious eleven year-old named Kayla who is on the murder scene, as she puts it, because she wants to find out who murdered her mother. Kayla echoes many shades of Savannah in terms of her spunky, defensive attitude, but more importantly in dealing with the loss of a mother at an early age, something that Savannah faced–and none too well, as readers will recall from previous books.

As with most supernatural investigations in smaller towns, the police often tend to get in the way of what the main character is trying to do and that’s exactly what happens as the authorities don’t trust Savannah not only because she’s a young, attractive woman, but also because she’s not exactly with the FBI.

Savannah quickly discovers the presence of a “cult” or commune (depending on who you ask in the town) where several young girls all live with an older gentleman named Alistair. Along the way, Armstrong plants many ideas in the reader’s mind of who the murderer is. And just when it seems like we’ve zeroed in on who it is, the plot takes a 180 and surprises us, which is hugely important for readers who often get bored with mysteries that are too easily solved or obvious.

One of the things that I found refreshing about this novel was its pace–although there’s certainly plenty of action, it felt a bit more like Armstrong took her time and really got comfortable with the speed–not too slow, and not too fast. Many urban fantasy novels suffer from being set permanently on fast forward with most events over before the reader knows it, but that isn’t the case with “Waking the Witch”–it allows the reader to absorb the story without just zooming past scenes.

Where some main characters can come off as downright annoying when written in the first person, Savannah has nothing to worry about–she’s refreshing in that she doesn’t constantly seem to be begging the reader to approve of her or to call her cool as some urban fantasies do.

Fans who prefer plot-driven stories that focus on story and the murder investigation element will really enjoy this book. It doesn’t emphasize the romance element or go into pages of wizard characters frying each other with fireballs (although Savannah does get to expose her true capabilities closer to the end of the novel).

Another element that also interested me was the inclusion of Santeria, albeit not too in depth and not in an annoying “here are ten hideously long and unedited paragraphs of pure info dump about the religion,” which I liked. It was an interesting choice, because usually the genre has writers bastardizing voodoo, white washing it, or getting it all wrong.

My favourite element was that Savannah is a likeable character–she isn’t trying too hard to be a tough guy or hypermasculinized to the point that it annoys the reader. She isn’t determined to convince the reader how much of a badass she is or that she should be taken seriously. She shows us. At the point where most of the “fight” type of scenes took place, Savannah had a tendency to come off as a bit too invincible–at first, but gradually, the interactions with villainous characters came off as more believable. Even witches and half-demons have to take a few hits.

Eventually, when the mystery is solved, the plot comes to a satisfying resolution, and although the ending is a bit too cliffhangerish and screams “sequel,” it’s to be expected given that the Otherworld series continues to grow in popularity and shows no signs of slowing down. Armstrong has built a steady stable of amazing, fantastic characters over the years, since 2001’s Bitten and fans who have been waiting patiently for Savannah to get her own book will not be disappointed.

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Similar Books:

Haunted by Kelley Armstrong

Frostbitten by Kelley Armstrong

Speak of the Devil by Jenna Black

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews

Happy Reading!