Read the back cover first to get the proper context for what's going to happen...

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	• Night Witch Jack Priest Bootleg Press, 2003 - 340 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Spine Chilling Good

You can't exactly call this literature but it's a super fast blast of a read. Lots of action. Lots of scary stuff. My spine was chilled, the hair on the back of neck tingled through out the whole books. Horror doesn't get any better than this.

A Priest of Horror

Since they both have similar copyright dates, I'm not positive which of Jack Priest's novels was written first, Gecko or Night Witch. If I had to guess, however, I'd say it was the latter: while Gecko is a decent book, Night Witch is better, the mark of a writer whose talents are growing.

The title character is a soucouyant, a demonic creature from Trinidad with powers akin to a shapeshifting vampire. Chronic thief John Coffee has stolen a magic locket from her, and without knowing what he has, has given it to his estranged eleven year old daughter, Carolina, who lives in Northern California. Two parallel stories develop. Carolina finds herself pursued by the Night Witch and seeks help from her classmate Arty, all the while contending with the usual tweener problems of school and bullies. Meanwhile, Carolina's teacher Sarah is ending her brief marriage after her husband showed his true colors (deeply yellow), but she quickly hooks up with John, who is trying to secretly protect his daughter.

The Night Witch is like a malevolent force of nature, rarely speaking but just bent on killing and re-obtaining her locket. Sometimes she takes on the guise of an old woman, but other times, she is in the form of a wolf, bear or hyena. Whatever her form, she can be wounded but never really killed, and in trying to achieve her goals, she is relentless. She represents one of the sign of writing growth I mentioned: in Gecko, it takes a long time to really see how bad the villain is (we're told he's evil, but don't directly see it for a good portion of the book). In Night Witch, we know pretty quickly just how powerful and nasty the soucouyant really is.

The other issue I had with Gecko had been dialogue that was occasionally stiff, but that is not nearly the same problem here. In fact, Priest succeeds in doing something that few authors of adult fiction seem able to accomplish: he writes kids who actually seem like kids, not just miniature adults.

The end result is a fun, fast-reading horror story. An additional nice thing is that Priest uses unusual horrors from other cultures; no standard vampires or serial killers here. If you are looking for a new type of horror fiction, try out Priest.

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Read the back cover first to get the proper context for what's going to happen...

The author Jack Priest was kind enough to send me another of his novels... Night Witch. This adheres to the Priest tradition of fast-paced horror novels that have the time slipping by quicker than you expected. My only caveat/caution would be to read the back cover first, as it will frame what's going on. I didn't do that, and as such spent more time wondering "why" than I should have.

The story revolves around a young girl who starts getting strange visits from a creature outside her window. She pretty much survives on her own, as her mom is always off "dating" someone new and her dad disappeared some time back. She starts a friendship with a boy from school who isn't very popular, but he's willing to stand up to the bullies and protect her as much as he can. Together they try and figure out what the creature is after, as well as how to survive against its raging attacks. The girl's father, thought to be long gone, is actually watching over her, knows what the creature is, what it wants, and is willing to die to protect her. The action continues non-stop until a final showdown at the end, pitting man against beast.

I've purposely kept the summary vague so as to not give away too much (I hope). From an entertainment standpoint, Night Witch was a fun read that helped pass the time as I flew overseas. If you're prepared to go with the flow, it's great. My only "complaint" is that the backstory of the creature remained a mystery until close to the end. That's not necessarily bad, but I was having a few problems trying to figure out why the creature wanted to get to the girl. If I had read the back cover first (don't know why I didn't this time), I would have had the proper context to understand what was happening a whole lot sooner. I would have stilled liked the book either way, but I would have been less "in the dark" about the driving force behind the plot.

But even with that, Priest's book is still one I'd recommend to someone who likes the horror/thriller genre. He's a refreshing change from the mainstream authors who normally dominate the bestseller lists.

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A Thrilling and Very Enjoyable Experience

Night Witch is about a little girl in California who is being chased by a soucouyant, a Caribbean vampire type old woman who can appear as anything she wants. She's a shapeshifter who usually shifts into very bad, menacing things. She wears a locket that lets her live forever and it was stolen by Carolina's father, who gave it to her as a gift. The soucouyant want's it back. However, Carolina doesn't know this. She only knows the monster is after her. Her father tries to protect her, but her true hero is overweight Arty, a boy in her class who adores her. The question is, can Arty, who has his own demons to deal with, defend Carolina against this blood sucking shapeshifter from another land?

Jack Priest has a knack of character development that gets his people right into your hearts without pages of background. I loved Arty, probably because I was a fat, ugly girl when I was growing up. I'm not now, that's for sure, but your childhood is something you never forget. I used to hunt with my father and I know how to load shotgun shells and more than once I've been knocked on my butt as Arty is when he does battle with the soucouyant, so no wonder he resonated as so very real to me. And I liked the way the bully Brad evolved and changed in the story. But I think I liked Carolina's father, John Coffee, the best. He's a bit shady, but he grows and changes too. Reading Night Witch was a thrilling and very enjoyable experience.

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It almost succeeds, but not quite

Characters:

Carolina Coffee is an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her mother. Carolina's father is alive, but his whereabouts are unknown. Her secret pet ferret is Sheila.

Arthur "Arty" Gibson lives with his long-suffering mother and his abusive, tyrannical, alcoholic father. He is overweight, and often picked on by peers, especially Brad Peters.

John Coffee is Carolina's on-the-run father, who is a great guy, except he happens to be a thief and has stolen the Night Witch's locket.

Sarah Sadler is Arty's and Carolina's teacher.

Harry Lightfoot is the local milkman, who is Native American and quite versed in dealing with evil creatures like the Night Witch.

The Night Witch is part vampire, part werewolf, and part sorceress. She can appear as a wolf, a hyena, a bear, a condor, or an old woman. She is immortal, as long as she has her magic locket. But, John Coffee stole the locket, without knowing its significance, and gave it to his daughter, Carolina, during one of his unpredictable visits.

Story: The Night Witch wants her locket back, as she is aging, and the locket will prevent that. She will gladly (and gleefully) kill anyone who gets in her way. Carolina and her friend, Arty, are trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the Night Witch, and do not know why she is chasing them. John Coffee is trying to simultaneously, or alternatingly, fleeing from the Night Witch and face her down, to protect his daughter. Eventually, Sarah Sadler gets mixed up with John Coffee, and helps out.

What I liked: The story is very fast-paced, with lots of action, no punches pulled, and no slow spots. The horror of the Night Witch is quite apparent. I also felt like I was starting to get to know the small town that is the setting. I also liked the way the relationship between Arty and his nemesis, Brad, turned out.

What I did not like so much: I wish this list were shorter, and I liked Jack Priest's other books more, but this one just had too many flaws. John Coffee is a really great guy, in every way, except he's also a life-long thief? I don't buy that. Arty's mother is a non-entity, but suddenly becomes a great parent once Arty's father is no longer in the picture? No sale there, either. Sarah Sadler is a very respected teacher, who ends up making Thelma and Louise look like church-mice? Nope. Arty and Carolina - are they eleven or sixteen? Their relationship spans that age-range and ends up not fitting at all. Carolina is a wonderful, smart little girl, who spouts profanity like a sailor? In other words, the characters just don't seem realistic to me.

There is also a major problem with the Night Witch character. Jack Priest does a great job of making her powerful and evil, but she remains very undefined, to me. I do not learn her story until late in the book, and the nature of the locket is pretty vague. How did it become magical? Why can't she make another, instead of traveling a thousand miles to chase it down? What I think would have helped a lot is the plot device that J.R.R. Tolkien used beautifully in "The Hobbit" and in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, wherein Smeagol/Gollum had brief soliloquies or conversations with himself, and thus gave the reader a perfect picture of his thinking, plotting, motives, and history. If we had several mini-chapters of the Night Witch doing that, she would have been a much less vague character, and a much more interesting one, to boot.

"Night Witch" was fun and interesting to read, and I ran through it like a fifty-yard dash, but it also left me only partially satisfied. Too fast, too light, too much left unanswered.

Jack Priest did a better job in his story Gecko.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Alone in bed Carolina plays with her locket, a gift from her dad. She doesn't know he stole it from an evil woman in Trinidad. She hears a noise outside her window, looks up and sees red eyes staring in at her. Something horrible is outside. The Night Witch is a soucouyant, Southern Caribbean cousin to the vampire and werewolf. She is a never aging shape shifter born of a mixture of Voodoo and European folklore. She lives forever because she wears a locket that contains a magic potion. Her locket has been stolen and she wants it back.

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