One of my favorite things when as you read through an author’s backlog and find they gradually improve in writing skill from book to book. While ‘A Witch’s Sin’ didn’t knock my socks off, I can say that it was quite pleasant and I’m interested in reading more in this series. It is the textbook definition of ‘cromulent.’
NOW THAT SAID, this book isn’t perfect. It had a slow start, it was a bit long in the tooth, and prone to infodumping. More on that later.
Spoilers Below. I’m writing this review in good faith, as one author reviewing another’s book, trying to balance positives with negatives.
Before we begin, do you have a book which needs editing? Do you want to read more reviews? Here is a link: The Rest of My In Depth Reviews
WHAT IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? WHAT GENRES? WHAT MAJOR TROPES?
- Cyberpunk
- Noir Thriller
- Vampires
- Dystopia, post-ecological collapse
- Corporate Hell
- Age 18+. Child endangerment.
MY EMOTIONAL RESPONSE/ FUN FACTOR
I enjoyed my time reading this. The book doesn’t do anything truly innovative… and that’s fine. This is a dyed-in-the-wool noir mystery thriller, setting out to tell a grim story in a near-future setting (with magic). A book doesn’t have to be innovative to be good. I appreciate an author who sets reasonable goals and achieves them.
This won’t be in the top books I read this year. Neither will it be near the bottom of what I read. This, like most books, will be somewhere in the middle. If you want to read a pretty good cyberpunk story, check this out and I don’t think you will be disappointed.
WARNING! QUIT READING NOW UNTIL YOU FINISH READING THE BOOK!
BIASES STATED
To put this review/study in proper context, you must know my starting point.
I don’t like cyberpunk as a general rule. I entered this book skeptical as a result. This book met my expectations, and exceeded them.
I read the author’s previous books. Being honest, I didn’t especially like either of them; they were fine, just not my style. I came into this novel skeptical.
SIMILAR BOOKS/OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
- Shadowrun, with monsters and cyberpunk and magic
CONCEPT AND EXECUTION
Going back to what I said above, I appreciate it when an author sets reasonable goals and achieves those goals. Too often an author creates a truly compelling story concept, and absolutely bungles the execution. I’d rather read a simple book written by a skilled author than a complex book written by an less-skilled author. Indeed, one of the skills of being an author is writing books which play to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses; awareness of your limits is a skill which new authors often need to learn the hard way. ‘A Witch’s Sin’ feels small in scope, but the author is able to use that smallness to fully stretch his creative muscles in a way which might not work in a more expansive novel.
‘A Witch’s Sin’ is a classic cyberpunk noir thriller. It has a slow start, but besides that maintains mostly quick pacing throughout, which is good in a thriller. The cyberpunk setting feels fully realized. The grittiness of the noir is good. I have a few minor nitpicks here and there, but overall this is quite pleasant. Be willing to forgive some infodumping, and go in expecting to have a pretty good time.
CHARACTERS, CHARACTERIZATION AND DIALOG
I’ll start out by saying I enjoyed the protagonist Taya. She is a believably traumatized character. In her backstory, her fiancé died of cancer and she was the sole caretaker in his final months. People who are dying can be a bit physically and emotionally messy, and Taya took the brunt of it. In the aftermath, she dropped out of college and became an enforcer (which is basically a private eye but more of a thug). This dynamic had a ‘hurt people hurt people’ energy to it.
Taya is a genuinely good character. I liked how her backstory informed her present day actions. You can see how her experience with her fiancé informs her present-day actions. For example, when a child is endangered in this book she goes on a no-holds-barred quest to save her, hoping to spare the kid the same horrors she was put through. Taya is a character who walks in the shadow, but will always be drawn towards the light.
I also liked how the author added small details about her. For example, when she orders food Taya has a few quirks. I liked how Taya begins the book by misgendering the vampire characters in this book (calling them ‘it’) but by the end she learns to not be an ass and actually start using their proper pronouns.
Her character arc could have been better.
- I would have liked if we got a prologue where we got to see Taya interacting with her fiancé Syd. His death informs so much of her present-day actions that not having him at all in this book feels weird.
- Who is she? For example, what was she majoring in when she was in higher education? Outside of her dead fiancé, we don’t know much of her history. Does she have biological family? I think she has a dad, but we never meet him.
- I liked how Taya begins the book by misgendering the vampire characters in this book (calling vampires ‘corpses’ and ‘it’) but by the end she learns to not be an ass and actually start using their proper pronouns.
Setting aside those complaints, I’d give her an A-/B+. Fantastic work.
The other characters don’t feel as well developed.
- Oscar felt like a vector for exposition at moments.
- The plot of this book is set off when a young girl, Nita, disappears. It feels weird Nita never appears in the book. We never even see her body, and given the trope I kept expecting her to turn up.
- The bad guys were a bit generic. I couldn’t tell the personalities of Charlie from Robert from James.
- Now that said, it is tradition in the Thriller genre for bad guy personalities to be flat, so this doesn’t matter too much.
- I liked that the author evoked the prosperity gospel directly; it is thematically resonant with the hypercapitalist ethos of the cyberpunk genre. It might have been nice if the narrative included a Christian character to explain that the prosperity gospel is against actual Christianity.
- Quinn’s character suffered from ‘cyberpunk evil best friend’ syndrome.
- It’s a common trope in noir and cyberpunk fiction that one of the main characters will be the Judas archetype and betray the heroes for the villains. Quinn is that traitor. This is good; I enjoy when an author understands the genre.
- The problem? For the first half of the book, the side characters keep saying, “Don’t trust Quinn. He’s going to betray you.” This is called foreshadowing. Generally, I praise the use of foreshadowing in fiction. However, this narrative did too much foreshadowing that Quinn would betray the heroes. His twist betrayal wasn’t a twist because it was too obvious.
- I feel like the book would have been improved if no one suspected Quinn was dodgy. That way, when the inevitable betrayal was revealed, the reader would feel a genuine gutpunch at this heel-turn. There could still be foreshadowing, but keep it hidden strictly in the subtext instead of bringing it forward into the text by saying “Don’t trust Quinn.”
These aren’t bad characters. I just wanted more from them.
PACING AND STRUCTURE
There’s a minor controversy floating around booktube spaces these days. The traditional publishing industry is de-emphasizing Epic Fantasy Genre books, while those Epic Fantasy which are being published are being forced to be smaller. Here’s the example I saw, from author Peter McGlean. In 2022, he published a book at 145,000 words (or 438 pages). Today, he has a hard cap of 100,000 words (or ~300 pages). The Publishing Houses are trying to increase profit margins by making books shorter. (I’ve heard the argument that this is because of paper shortages. Same difference, in the end.)
Part of the fun of the Epic Fantasy genre is that it’s books are MASSIVE. Some people think that this artificial constriction on book size is an attack on the soul of the genre. I sympathize, but disagree. For years now I’ve complained about SciFi and Fantasy books growing more and more bloated, and could stand to lose a few dozen pages (or a few hundred pages). To quote Mark Rosewater, ‘Restrictions breed creativity.’
‘Neon Ghosts: Witch’s Sin’ is not Epic Fantasy, and it’s not traditionally published, but I feel it is bloated. This is supposed to be a thriller, but ‘Witch’s Sin’ is close to 500 pages long. Thrillers are supposed to be fast paced; Thrillers are usually around 300 to 400 pages long. Few authors can sustain a fast pace for 500 pages. I feel like this should have been significantly shorter.
- The first thirty to fifty pages were off the mark. I feel like they could have been cut almost entirely with little being lost.
- The book uses the same storybeat twice.
- The protagonist attacks a rogue vampire Gavin, and needs medical attention afterwards. To survive, she drinks Oscar’s vampire blood.
- This storybeat of the protagonist needing medical attention and drinking Oscar’s blood repeats later in the book.
- I feel like reusing the same storybeat reduces it’s punch. The battle with Gavin could have been cut. It didn’t add much to the story.
- In the latter half of the novel, Taya spends a fairly large amount of time trapped in a room. I understand why it was there thematically and emotionally, but it was boring and let the energy out of the book’s tension. It could have been cut.
- The battles were pretty cool, but they dragged on and on. The final battle in particular was lengthy. They could have been trimmed down.
- Taya spends the first half of the book worrying about money. That concern vanishes halfway through the book.
- I really liked this when it popped up; it added to Taya’s characterization. I wish the narrative continued having Taya being concerned about money in the latter half of the book. Barring that, it should have been cut from the beginning to keep the book clean.
Now, for the record, none of the chapters I suggested cutting are bad. I personally found the battle with Gavin to be compelling. But if this book is gonna be shorter, sometimes you have to kill a few darlings.
PLOT, STAKES AND TENSION
I enjoyed the plot. There’s not much to write home about, it’s a fairly standard noir thriller. Go in expecting lots of violence and intrigue, with many twists and turns, not knowing who to trust. I feel like I can’t say much without spoilers, so I won’t say anything more.
The book felt like it had high stakes and tension, which is good as this is a thriller.
This looks like a mystery story, but do not go in expecting a mystery. This has the trappings of a mystery, but this book doesn’t function as a mystery. There are clues, but no substantial red herrings and very few suspects. This book functions as a Thriller, a genre defined by action and suspense and a fast pace.
AUTHORIAL VOICE (TONE, PROSE AND THEME)
One problem with this book is that it was prone to infodumping information about the setting. Early on, I was nearly ejected from the book on multiple occasions because several paragraphs in a row were set aside to just blathering about the world, vampires, drones, or advertising.
‘Show, don’t tell’ is common writing advice meaning it is better to add information into the subtext of a story instead of actually into the text. Here’s an example.
- In this book, a vampire explains that they no longer eat humans, but instead eat artificial blood. I thought this was clunky.
- I would have preferred it if when Taya crashed at a vampire’s apartment, when she tidied up the apartment she tidied up a few empty bags of artificial blood. That would have gotten a TON of information across to the reader.
- Don’t explain the artificial blood; just have it be a naturally occurring bit of the setting, letting the reader put 2+2 together on their own.
Some amount of infodumping will always be necessary. But I feel this book would have been stronger if it trusted the reader to pick things up along the way.
I have complicated feelings about this book’s editing/the author’s voice. I’m hijacking this review to rant for a little while.
If I compare ‘Witch’s Sin’ to other self-pub works, this is as well edited as most upper-crust self-pub books. On a line-edit level, I noticed a missing quotation mark at one point, and a missing diacritical mark at another point. In a 500 page book, that’s a normal amount of errors to slip through. Whoever the author hired for line edits did a great job as far as I could tell.
The prose in ‘Witch’s Sin’ is serviceable, but could have used more polish. By ‘polish,’ I mean: replace weak verbs with powerful verbs, passive voice, trim down on gerands, don’t use redundant language, that sort of thing. You know, the boring and optional aspect of editing; the unpleasant fiddly bits. ‘Witch’s Sin’ prose is serviceable, but could have been taken to the next level. If you can’t tolerate a homespun writing style, you probably shouldn’t read self-pub.
I am not badmouthing this book’s author or editor; self-pub authors and editors have it a lot harder than their publishing industry equivalents. Industry books often go through multiple rounds of editing, with multiple editors who are skilled at multiple editing skillsets and thus catch more errors and suggest ways to polish it. Self-pub books can’t do that because $$$.
I find it a bit gross when I read a review which takes potshots at a self-pub book’s editing, especially when they complain about the ‘fiddly bits’ not being as strong as it could be. As a reviewer, I am moderately lenient with self-pub books, given that these are generally written by/edited by passionate amateurs. (For the record, I count myself as a passionate amateur.) The way I see things, if the reviewer doesn’t make reasonable concessions, they wind up saying ‘Screw the mom-and-pop store authors, I only like reading books published by Walmart and Costco.’
Now that said, this book got a quarter million dollars for it’s kickstarter. I know most of that went to pay for printing and distribution, but I can’t help but give this situation the side-eye. That’s a lot of money. I don’t know how much money is needed for someone to stop being a ‘passionate amateur’ and start being treated as a professional.
Complicating this further is the fact that most industry-published Fantasy novels also fail my ‘needs more polish’ test. While reading a trad-published book recently, I caught myself thinking “How the f*** did that slip past the developmental editor?!” The answer is there probably was no developmental editor; those multiple rounds of editing I mentioned above often don’t happen. The publishing houses have been laying off editors.
The industry saves money cutting corners. Even if the present economic woes end, the new status-quo of minimal editing will remain because corporations don’t switch back to a business model which makes less money after they find a business model which makes more money. This situation is just going to get worse, because the fiduciary interests of shareholders take precedence over art.
A lack of polish is everywhere in the genre; can I blame a random self-pub book for not being polished, while professionally published books are equally unpolished, or worse? At what point am I just being a stick in the mud who refuses to accept the fact that the world has moved on and the old style of writing/editing is never coming back?
Rant over. This book is fine, in the same sense most books published these days are fine.
SETTING, WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINALITY
After earth’s ecological collapse, humanity now live in skyscrapers. The rich live above the toxic clouds, while the poor are forced to breathe the poisoned air below. Drones fly from window to window, advertising to people the latest products; you can’t escape the corporate hellscape, even in your dreams because without an adblocker they’ll stream adverts into your brain.
I felt mixed on the inclusion of vampires in this book. It’s not exactly subtle that the ‘parasite on humanity’ trope can apply to both vampires and also unrestrained capitalism. But the author didn’t lean very hard into that trope; the vampires were all good guys in this book. (Otherwise the vampires were a smidge generic in this. If you like weird vampires, you won’t really get that here.)
I wanted more from the capitalist critique. This book had omni-present advertising as a major worldbuilding element. The book used the prosperity gospel. As a result of this worldbuilding signposting, I figured that unrestrained capitalism would play a major role in the story as a result. The book really didn’t go that deep into unfettered capitalism. There were no megacorps, no anarchocapitalism, as example.
LESSONS LEARNED
As an author, I want to improve my own writing/editing skills. To that end, I like to learn lessons from every story I read. Here’s what I learned from this story:
- Make sure all the important characters appear in the book at least once.
- The murder victim in this book, Nita, never appears in this book, and her body also never appears.
- Similarly, the character of Syd died before the events of this book but he hung like a ghost over the events of the book.
- I feel like the book would have been better if these characters were included.
Here’s a link to all the lessons I’ve previously learned.
SUMMARY
Overall, I enjoyed reading this. Like I said, it didn’t knock my socks off, but I enjoyed it moderately.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 