Season of the Witch

Spooky, very dark, dead men tell tales, a hero who can enter other people’s memories, and two very spooky, very gorgeous, very dangerous sisters. This is the backdrop of Natasha Mostert’s Season of the Witch.

If you like gothic, magic, mystical symbols, and danger very “out of this world,” then this is the read for you. It drags you in as it drags you under, with a man drowning in a pool. Weak yet he tries to pull himself up, a dark figure–a woman–holds him down.

Gabriel is our hero. A crook by profession, he hacks information, but he has been trained as a remote viewer. (This skill is disorienting and mad- making, so don’t try it as a hobby. He can actually enter other people’s experiences and live them. Mostert is a researcher, and she intimates that something like this has actually been part of a government research project. Let’s hope it ran out of funds.)

He loves the danger of his job and he’s unhappy to meet a former lover who is actually happy in her marriage. Who needs this? And when she begs him to find out what happened to her stepson who has entered a spooky house with two sisters and never came out, why should he? Because her husband is dying. That’s a catcher. When he does the RV thing, which brings him into the drowning man’s head, he experiences death with the guy as he’s pushed under. He comes out of this ride disoriented but intrigued by the woman who pushed the guy under–so intrigued that he takes the job and enters the house of the two spooky sisters, which is more a dark world than real estate. Strange rituals have been going on. The stepson had been drawn into it and never left. Now we know why.

Gabriel becomes drawn in to the world of these two sisters–the good sister and the bad sister. You’ve seen this in old movies. Bette Davis playing both parts in Dead Ringer (1964), and Bette with Joan Crawford in the unforgettable What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). That one was really scary. The bad sister and the good sister. So it is with Season of the Witch. You don’t need a program to tell them apart. You simply need to sit down in a snuggly chair or take the book to bed on a cold night and enter that world with Gabriel. A scary ride but worth the time.