The Witchhunter: Red Shadow
The Witchhunter: Red Shadow by Zoltán Pósfai is interesting. By interesting, I mean that the premise is unique and is not what I expected. I was going in with a thought of it being a old-school witch-hunting story and some redemption along the way and changing of points of view. Some of that did happen. But not all of it. It twists the idea and adds its unique flair to it which I appreciate.
I won’t spoil the details of the plot or the workings of the world, because seeing it unfold and finding out those finer details are what makes Witchhunter: Red Shadow somewhat of a compelling read. I say somewhat because it has some core flaws.
The dialogue being the primary one. The main character of Conley is sort of awkward and has his own issues, so his weird-ness with speaking is excusable, but every other character talks in a jilted manner that is not natural. The formatting of the dialogue also contributes to this. The hyphens at the beginning and the indentation style are unorthodox and make the dialogue not flow with the descriptions. The prose asides from that is more methodical, fitting the perspective of the main character, and reads well.
The other problem I had with the Witchhunter was the pacing of the exposition. I wanted to keep reading, no doubt, but there were lots of things that were not made clear or explained at first. They eventually were and looking back I can see the lead up to it. The exposition was very end-heavy. It was thrust onto the end where things were ramping up. Just when things were getting really cool it slowed down to explain it all. I feel like if there was a way for the exposition/clues to be thrown in the beginning more it would have come across smoother.
The Witchhunter: Red Shadow is an uneven work at its core. It has its good and bad qualities. The ratio of it is in its favor, however. I enjoyed reading it and was engaged in discovering where it would go, so I recommend it for those that can tolerate some dialogue and pacing problems.
