Review: Devil's Call by J. Danielle Dorn
Devil's Call by J. Danielle Dorn
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
“Before what I knew what it was to be a witch, I knew what it was to be different.”
Li Lian – or Lilian, as many mistakenly call her – has never by any means lived an ordinary life. Since before she knew what she was, she could move objects with her mind. Where she walked without shoes, wildflowers grew. She comes from a female-only line of strong witches, long exiled by witch hunters from their homeland of Scotland. But her life is no fairy tale. In St. Louis in the mid 1800’s, the MacPherson women cannot live and practice magic as freely as some of them may wish, especially young Lily.
So, when a young soldier and doctor named Matthew Callahan crosses her path, she quickly falls in love, desperate for a change, and follows him to Chicago and soon after to the territory of Nebraska. Here, he can practice medicine where it's needed, and she can practice magic without constantly worrying about drawing attention to making flowers and trees grow where they shouldn't.
In her new life, suddenly no longer feeling like a child in a cage, Lily practices her magic more freely, as well as becomes pregnant. Before their new, perfect life can truly blossom, Matthew is brutally murdered right before Lily’s eyes. Without hesitation, she vows to go after his killers, alone if she has to, and will travel as far as she has to – baby in her belly or not. The rest of the novel follows Lily and an unlikely companion across the wilderness of the yet young United States, up and down the vast Mississippi, through the unruly streets of New Orleans, and to the unforgiving landscape of the Badlands in the depths of winter.
The entire book is written in a letter to Lily’s daughter. We do not, until the very end, know why Lily must leave her child behind, or why this is her only means of passing on to her both advice of magic and life, as well as the story of how she came to be. Though the tale she tells is perilous, she manages some humor, and does manage to give her daughter some solid advice, that, if Lily had followed herself, she would probably not be in the position that she is. “Be wild, but be wise, darling,” she tells her, someone hoping this will help prepare her child for a better life than her own. “What is what right is not always easy, my dear, but it makes the world a less repugnant place”.
I can say without a doubt that I never read a book quite like this before. The genre blending of fantasy and Western felt incredibly fresh and exciting. Magic and witchy novels are perhaps my favorite genre, and the same setting and character types are repeated over and over. Never has there been a witch like Li Lian MacPherson. She is a fairly layered and interesting character. The love for her unborn daughter on her grueling journey to find her husband’s killer is heart-warming, and Ms. Dorn does a great job expressing it ( "I cannot tell you what will happen after I set down this pen[…]But I can tell you I have loved you since before you were born, and I will love you until my bones are dust” ).
Lily's companion, Hawking, the village drunk, provides occasional comic relief (Lily continually pokes fun of his perpetual drunkenness, with quips like: “[The] only evidence you’re gonna find there is the proof on the front of a dammed whiskey bottle” ). Every other character in the book however, including Matthew, we barely get to know before the either wind up dead or out of the picture.
At times, the writing seemed very rushed. I would have loved for it to have been longer. Learning more about Lily’s childhood, her family background (which was unnecessarily complicated & confusing(, and how she learned the magic that she used along her journey would have made it a lot more enjoyable for me. However, as the book is written as a letter, and as we eventually learn, in an extreme and time-sensitive manner, this makes a bit more sense. The conclusion of the novel also seemed anti-climactic. For a few hundred pages we are following this mysterious villain(s), and it all ended very quickly, with a lot of back & forth banter about whether or not the devil is real or not.
I would have been happy with 100-200 more pages, since Ms. Dorn is quite capable of providing the reader with imaginative details and lush language (some favorite examples: “the air was the ghost of violence”, “my hex had left a stain in the air” ).
It just wasn’t quite enough for me to give this novel a higher rating. I will hold out hope for a sequel, and that we can dive a bit deeper into the unique world of Lily MacPherson and the now three generations of witches in the wild west.
**Many thanks to Inkshares & Netgalley for my first ARC!**
View all my reviews
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
“Before what I knew what it was to be a witch, I knew what it was to be different.”
Li Lian – or Lilian, as many mistakenly call her – has never by any means lived an ordinary life. Since before she knew what she was, she could move objects with her mind. Where she walked without shoes, wildflowers grew. She comes from a female-only line of strong witches, long exiled by witch hunters from their homeland of Scotland. But her life is no fairy tale. In St. Louis in the mid 1800’s, the MacPherson women cannot live and practice magic as freely as some of them may wish, especially young Lily.
So, when a young soldier and doctor named Matthew Callahan crosses her path, she quickly falls in love, desperate for a change, and follows him to Chicago and soon after to the territory of Nebraska. Here, he can practice medicine where it's needed, and she can practice magic without constantly worrying about drawing attention to making flowers and trees grow where they shouldn't.
In her new life, suddenly no longer feeling like a child in a cage, Lily practices her magic more freely, as well as becomes pregnant. Before their new, perfect life can truly blossom, Matthew is brutally murdered right before Lily’s eyes. Without hesitation, she vows to go after his killers, alone if she has to, and will travel as far as she has to – baby in her belly or not. The rest of the novel follows Lily and an unlikely companion across the wilderness of the yet young United States, up and down the vast Mississippi, through the unruly streets of New Orleans, and to the unforgiving landscape of the Badlands in the depths of winter.
The entire book is written in a letter to Lily’s daughter. We do not, until the very end, know why Lily must leave her child behind, or why this is her only means of passing on to her both advice of magic and life, as well as the story of how she came to be. Though the tale she tells is perilous, she manages some humor, and does manage to give her daughter some solid advice, that, if Lily had followed herself, she would probably not be in the position that she is. “Be wild, but be wise, darling,” she tells her, someone hoping this will help prepare her child for a better life than her own. “What is what right is not always easy, my dear, but it makes the world a less repugnant place”.
I can say without a doubt that I never read a book quite like this before. The genre blending of fantasy and Western felt incredibly fresh and exciting. Magic and witchy novels are perhaps my favorite genre, and the same setting and character types are repeated over and over. Never has there been a witch like Li Lian MacPherson. She is a fairly layered and interesting character. The love for her unborn daughter on her grueling journey to find her husband’s killer is heart-warming, and Ms. Dorn does a great job expressing it ( "I cannot tell you what will happen after I set down this pen[…]But I can tell you I have loved you since before you were born, and I will love you until my bones are dust” ).
Lily's companion, Hawking, the village drunk, provides occasional comic relief (Lily continually pokes fun of his perpetual drunkenness, with quips like: “[The] only evidence you’re gonna find there is the proof on the front of a dammed whiskey bottle” ). Every other character in the book however, including Matthew, we barely get to know before the either wind up dead or out of the picture.
At times, the writing seemed very rushed. I would have loved for it to have been longer. Learning more about Lily’s childhood, her family background (which was unnecessarily complicated & confusing(, and how she learned the magic that she used along her journey would have made it a lot more enjoyable for me. However, as the book is written as a letter, and as we eventually learn, in an extreme and time-sensitive manner, this makes a bit more sense. The conclusion of the novel also seemed anti-climactic. For a few hundred pages we are following this mysterious villain(s), and it all ended very quickly, with a lot of back & forth banter about whether or not the devil is real or not.
I would have been happy with 100-200 more pages, since Ms. Dorn is quite capable of providing the reader with imaginative details and lush language (some favorite examples: “the air was the ghost of violence”, “my hex had left a stain in the air” ).
It just wasn’t quite enough for me to give this novel a higher rating. I will hold out hope for a sequel, and that we can dive a bit deeper into the unique world of Lily MacPherson and the now three generations of witches in the wild west.
**Many thanks to Inkshares & Netgalley for my first ARC!**
View all my reviews
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