Review: Season of the Witch

South African writer Mostert’s edgy London protagonist, Gabriel Blackstone, is a self-centered information thief, an industrial spy who has turned his back on his gift for “remote viewing,” an ability to “slam a ride” into another’s mind. In college he had joined a remote-viewing project to find missing people, but failed as a team player. The best of the bunch, his arrogance led to disaster.

But now his girlfriend from those days, Frankie, turns up asking for help in finding her dying husband’s missing son, Robbie. Gabriel’s initial reluctance dissipates when his first foray leads to the exotic Monk sisters, Morrighan and Minnaloushe, one of whom is likely a murderer.

Slamming his first ride in years, Gabriel finds himself in Robbie’s mind, accompanying him on a euphoric journey through a house with infinite doors and fantastical rooms filled with horror and beauty. Then a woman, her face masked, leads Robbie into a portal of utter chaos, which overwhelms and destroys him. The “ride” ends in a swimming pool as the woman approaches the now paralyzed Robbie and pushes his head under the surface of the water.

Gabriel embarks on the dangerous game immediately, breaking into the Monks’ home to infiltrate their computers. While the sisters are immediately suspicious of him, they are also intrigued, for their own reasons. They challenge him, physically and mentally, and introduce him to some of their transcendent studies of ancient Gnosticism, alchemy, and the Art of Memory.

Long, hazy seductive evenings derail Gabriel. One of the sisters, he learns, to his shock, is also a remote viewer, and a strong one. One writes a mystical online diary. Gabriel finds himself falling in love, but with which one?

A lush, gothic thriller, the cat-and-mouse game builds to an inevitable and mostly satisfying cataclysm. Mostert introduces tantalizing ideas of mysticism and the occult but given the sisters’ mysteriousness and Gabriel’s self-involvement, these are not fully developed. Still, Mostert’s prose is atmospheric and though Gabriel is not very likable, the patient reader knows self-knowledge is in the cards.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Lynn Harnett

Book Review: Season of the Witch