A Lovely Night for a Witching

The Witch Hunter series by J.Z. Foster.

When your only trained witch hunter thinks it's all a very serious LARP....

J.Z. Foster starts out only slightly tongue in cheek with a hapless narrator, a setup familiar to any horror movie fan, and the drumbeat of inevitable plot beats. It's your average girl reporter meets dorky D&D playing witch-boy who pretends to lead them in search of a witch only to find out witches are real, a ghost is after them, and the all-devouring wight in the basement won't put them on the menu as long as they feed him pork rinds....

Foster's quick descriptions and natural dialog make the pages fly by. The stakes are real - the danger is real - the absurdity of it all is very real - and it very really works together to make a scary, humorous, and engaging tale that gets you on the inside even as it takes you to The Outside....

The frantic antics and frenetic movement of Into the Outside carry over into Gods and Monsters, but take a back seat to a heaping helping of body horror, view askew psychological terror, and a spiraling plummet to the end of the rope. We enter the picture on the edge of the closing curtain - Richard is lying on his deathbed and this is his last confession.

Everything that I loved about Into the Outside returns in the sequel. The pace is quick. The action is visceral and breathless. The stakes are way out of the hero's league. The gaggle of friends are more concerned about potentially ruining a rare comic where the heroine is drawn with bosoms bared than with threat to life, limb, or fundamental reality. The Wight is addicted to television. It is everything I want from an author with a deep love for the genre and a canny, gentle wit when calling out all of those disbeliefs we willingly - even desperately - suspend for an evening of delightful frights. 

But what takes this book to the next level is that Richard is no longer knowledge-less, even if he is still hapless. Rich-Sword has STEPPED UP. If the first book had Richard struggling to find his place in a new and dangerous world, the sequel starts with a cast that already knows enough of the score to be afraid, but not enough to do anything about it. Richard is the only one with any kind of grasp of what's really going on, and the world is SO MUCH weirder than any of us could possibly conceive. 

With the apocalypse slouching roughly towards birth, it is Richard, trapped in a world he never made, who must stand in the gap for everyone who believes in him and for everyone who opposes him, and they will never know what it is going to cost him.

J.Z. Foster is at the top of his game with the Witch Hunter stories. If you enjoy movies like Knights of Badassdom or Dead Gentlemen's Demon Hunters, then the Witch Hunter stories are for you. You can find all of his books at his website, including a Witch Hunter prequel that is only available there. 

After all, it truly is a lovely night for a witching.