DAW - No 1 - Spell of Witch World

 

Although this is the first book published by DAW it is actually the Seventh book in Andre Norton's Witch World saga. As someone who has not read the others the result was that I think I lost a lot of context and certainly a lot of the history.

Centred on twins, warrior brother and witch sister the story ambles along nicely but the problem I found is that since reading books like this I've read books by the likes of Steven Erikson and Joe Abercombie and I'm afraid this felt very light weight in comparison. The central characters were never as fleshed out or engaging as books written today, I guess there was more novelty in fantasy stories and the book gathered fans based on the story and concepts rather then the writing style or characterisation.

All in all, it was readable and moved along nicely. It didn't however make me want to track down the other six and immerse myself in more of Andre Norton's stories.