Since I was in Ohio on Friday, I didn’t do my usual Friday Booktalk reviews! What better day then, to post this one than today, the release of Anya Bast’s marvelously sexy and inventive Witch Fire!
Disclaimer: I know Anya Bast and we’ve been friends for several years. In addition to being one of the kindest, sweetest people I know, she’s also an amazing writer. I’m even fortunate enough to be her crit partner so I got to watch Witch Fire grow and polish into what I believe is an excellent book.
In Witch Fire, Bast gives us the first in what I hope to be a many book series in which witches (say that three times fast) are governed by The Coven but there are rogue witches out there who remain a threat to all the Coven witches hold sacred.
She also gives us Jack McAllister - a fire witch and one of The Coven’s men sent to find Mira Hoskins, an air witch who has no real idea of her power because she’s grown up outside The Coven. She’s under threat now from the Duskoff - the rogue witches who want to take her so they can drain her power - the same way they did her parents.
Bast gives readers two very complex characters in Jack and Mira. They’re instantly drawn to one another but Jack has a secret he’s convinced will drive Mira away should she find out and Mira can’t understand why Jack wants to push her away when they have something so good between them. It’s paced quite skillfully and the tension is delicious as is the sexual and romantic tension between these two. The ending between them is a happy one of course, this is a romance, but Bast makes them both work for it. It’s a believable twist that makes Witch Fire stand out in yet another way.
I love Jack, he’s a really sexy man, smart, strong, courageous and yet, he’s got a blind spot about his past.
Mira is such a wonderful romance heroine! My favorite kind - real, flawed, she’s got her insecurities but she’s strong too. A survivor. Mira doesn’t go into the basement alone when there’s a serial killer about but she faces a heck of a lot of scary stuff but never gives up.
The worldbuilding is wonderfully inventive and original. Bast has created witches and magick with believable rules and boundaries. The action and mystery elements are well drawn and interesting and the secondary characters are really fabulous - especially Thomas (who gets his story in Bast’s next book, Witch Blood) and the delicious villian Stefan.
Anya’s Winter Pleasures was the first EC book I ever bought and I’ve loved her ever since. She has continued to grow and improve, giving her readers new worlds and characters to lose themselves in. In Witch Fire, her talent shines and I can heartily recommend it!
