- Title:
- Mountain Witch
- Author:
- Rachel Ford
- Release:
- June 10, 2021
- Format:
- Audiobook
- Narrartor
- Lynne Ennis
- Series:
- Knight Protector #2
This is my first book in this series. I requested it as a review copy on StoryOrigin about 3+ years before writing this…. Yeah, I’m slow. Fuck, the last 2 years have been fucking rough. I kept trying to review it, noticing it was the second book and going “Gotta get an Audible credit to buy the first one….” and kept forgetting, or knocking other books off of my wish list.
Well, fuck. I honestly don’t remember the first 20 – 30% of this book, due to the lack of context. But I kept trudging along, and I’m very glad I did, ’cause the characters are fucking great. And this is the best example of why I don’t read back cover summaries. The summary is a crock of shit. From what I’ve heard so far, I never got the impression main character was afraid of this witch.
The mountain witch is kind, empathetic, helpful, beyond tolerant, even when she has damn good reason not to. That goddamned back cover summary shit pisses me off. It does the characters a disservice, and outright lies to and misleads the reader. She also has this awesome bone-dragon friend who is like a giant cat. He acts aloof and sassy, and acts like he doesn’t want to be there. But when push cums to shove, he’s there for his friend.
And that is what made me enjoy this book. The characters are fucking great. They’re all compelling in their own ways, which really sells their believability as humans. Sure, they’re not all “humans”, but as humans, our only basis for reference is other humans. So all characters in every book and story is just some human archetype or personality trait that’s been muddled with. The important thing here is that they all have personality, charm, character, ideals and beliefs. They don’t cease to exist as people the moment they’re off the page.
I don’t know what the deal with these dragons, riders, and dirty southerners are. I’m sure if I read the first book, or listened to it, they’d tell me all about it.
One aspect of this book I found super janky is the Sci-Fi laser pistols and magic. That’s some Star Wars jank, where it feels like it doesn’t want to be Sci-Fi or fantasy. Why the fuck are people still using swords in a world with goddamn laser pistol technology!? The fuck is that nonsense about? Not only that, they barely seem to be mentioned or play a role, so why even have them?
One other instance of “Abdomen” being referred to as “Stomach”. Your stomach is an internal organ, if a character was stabbed in the stomach, or has their hands on their stomach, they’re beyond fucked. Nobody ever refers to a character resting their hands on their lungs instead of their chest, because that would be idiotic and absurd.
As for the narration, I take issue, as I always do, with ANYBODY who pronounces “envelope” as “onvelope”. You don’t “ontertain” guests at a party, you don’t “onter” a room, and not a fucking soul says a room is “on-veloped” in darkness when you turn off its lights.
The narrator also puts annoying emphasis on “wh” sounds, and pronounces them as “hwite”, “hwhispered”, “hwhile”, “hwhen”, and so on. Hwhitch is incredibly fucking annoying, and distracting as shit.
That being said I still think the narration was fantastic. Especially the characters. Her scene setting can be dull and monotone when going on for extended lenghts, but her amazing vocalization for the characters is really what saved it. Also, I really can’t stress this enough; The scene setting was good, outside of the extended instances where it was several mintues of scene setting.
Here and there, there were these additional sound effects added in, and I really appreciated that. They were a bit inconsistent, I don’t want that to be viewed as a complaint though. I was simply trying to figure out why it was (seemingly) character noises sometimes, and other times it was stuff like a laser pistol, horse running, glass breaking, or whatever else. There were times I was expecting sounds, and didn’t hear them, and times I didn’t expect them, and got them. It’s more than most narrators do, and I just wanted to note that the extra effort is appreciated. It’s the little touches like that, which add character and make the narration more memorable and easier to reccomend.
NOTE: This copy was provided to me free of charge as a digital review copy. The opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone, I was not paid or requested to give this book a certain rating, suggestion, or approval.