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A Nameless Witch by A. Lee Martinez
01/05/2008 . Source: Joules Taylor 
pub: TOR. 320 page hardback. Price: $24.95 (US), $31.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-7653-1868-7. Buy A Nameless Witch in the USA - or Buy A Nameless Witch in the UK  check out website: www.tor-forge.com and www.aleemartinez.com
'A tale of vengeance, true love, and cannibalism' (sub-title, front cover)
The nameless witch was born under a curse, a particularly unpleasant one cast by a most unpleasant wizard she calls Nasty Larry as his true name has been forgotten across the years. Her great-great-great-great-grandfather decapitated him in a battle to save the land and the head pronounced that from then until the end of time the sixth child of every generation would be an abomination. Up until the witch's parents, the family had refrained from having more than five children: they thought that perhaps the curse hadn't 'taken'...
It's a terrible curse, too. She was born undead, but not like a ghoul or a vampire. True, she has a distinct aversion to sunlight, although it doesn't kill her and she eats mostly meat which she likes raw and bloody, but much of her nature is quite human. She's also immortal, ageless and worse of all, stunningly beautiful. Her parents kept her in a damp, dark cellar until she was eighteen, when she was rescued by the witch Ghastly Edna and taken on as an apprentice.
Under Ghastly Edna's tutelage, she learns witchcraft, for which she had a natural talent anyway and also how to appear less lovely and more witchly. The nameless witch enjoys her new life until the day Edna tells her she is going to be killed that afternoon...
Edna's spirit hangs around long enough to re-animate her body and give the nameless witch some final advice. Afterwards, the nameless witch, accompanied by her new familiar, Newt, previously Ghastly Edna's familiar, sets out on a voyage to find her own destiny. Along the way her broom gains a personality and a name, she meets Gwurm the troll and eventually is joined by Wyst of the West, a pure and virtuous White Knight.
The world she inhabits is full of magic and as Ghastly Edna had revealed, 'Magic is aware. All things are in some fashion. Even those things we cannot touch, like the wind, and the seasons, and gravity. But nothing is quite as aware as the magic. It plays with wizards and witches and magi, and make no mistake. It is we who serve the magic, not the other way around. And it will brook no disrespect.' (p.52) which goes a long way to explaining the story's sequence of events.
I can't say too much more without giving spoilers, but I will say that this book is an absolute delight. Written in a wonderfully pragmatic and down-to-earth style but with a deft touch, it has terrifically humorous touches: Newt, for example, is a demon-possessed duck. Yes, he has fangs and wings that can disembowel a man, but a duck is hardly the most impressive familiar for a witch. He's also, to his fury, white, a most inappropriate colour for a demon.
It also contains some very pithy observations: '...life is complicated and difficult. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't truly lived.' (p. 239)
'Life isn't about things you can't have... It is about those blessings you do find along the way.' (p. 292) And my favourite one to remember: 'To worry is to acknowledge that the world is unpredictable, and there is power in understanding one's own powerlessness at times. But too often, worry takes on a life of its own... They'll plague themselves with so many 'what if's and 'if only's that they soon forget to ponder the true possibilities before them. Which inevitably leads to poor decisions. Whatever happens will happen. Sometimes we have say over the future. Sometimes we do not. Either way, worrying alone never accomplishes anything.' (p. 139)
The ending was unexpected but very beautiful, immensely satisfying and the book as a whole a salutary lesson in living and in the art of telling stories. As the nameless witch says, 'A worthwhile quest always involved a great deal of nothing happening. Nothing noteworthy anyway. These are the forgotten moments of legend, twenty years of dull and unremarkable wandering condensed into a line or two on an epic poem. A good storyteller knows what's worth telling and what's not and what merits attention without excessive details.' (p.177)
Under those terms, A. Lee Martinez is a very good storyteller indeed. At heart, 'A Nameless Witch' is a story about life, love and the meaning of sacrifice and I'd recommend it to anyone over the age of about 11. It's a little gem!
Joules Taylor
http://www.heartsown.biz
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