Genre: Fantasy, YA
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
To win back his soul from the Devil, a cynical witch must decide if his own freedom is worth delivering a selfless boy to damnation.
Perpetually seventeen, Callum the green witch is indebted to the Devil until he fulfills 666 tasks. When Lucifer offers Callum an unusual job that will end Callum’s contract early and return his soul, Callum readily agrees. All Callum must do is ensure Augustus “Auggie” Sanderson makes it from London to New York by the next blood moon.
This proves more difficult than Callum could’ve predicted as power-hungry witch kings and queens, blood witches, and even necromancers are also out to capture Auggie. To deliver Auggie on time and win back his soul, Callum will need the help of his black cat familiar, his human assistant (whom he accidentally turned into a frog), a four-armed, tally undead witch, and Auggie himself—who seems too good to have made a deal with the Devil.
But if Auggie didn’t make a deal with the Devil, what awaits him in New York? And if Auggie doesn’t deserve his fate, is Callum willing to give up his own chance at freedom to save him?
The Review
David Ferraro’s story is a darkly romantic fantasy set in a world that made me distinctly uncomfortable. Witches are dominant in this world, and humans are both dependent on them for their magical skills and resentful of them for their cruelty and selfishness.
Well, if you think about it, this world isn’t all that unfamiliar, but it still makes me uncomfortable.
Lucifer is the ruler of Hell, and God, while the ruler of Heaven, seems oddly absent, and certainly not much respected by the witches. Some humans, known as alchemists, use their prayers to God as magic, energizing their medicinal herbs and other concoctions. This in turn threatens the witches, whose magical assistance for humans is their source of income.
Callum Chartreuse is a green English witch who looks seventeen but is much older. He doesn’t trust humans, but somehow has a precocious six-year-old girl coming to his isolated shop to visit. He also has a sassy familiar, a black cat named Narcissa. Callum has a complicated personal back story, which we learn along the way. More immediately, Callum has bargained his soul to Lucifer—the reason for which we also learn, eventually.
The narrative is triggered by Lucifer calling Callum to his presence in order to give him a task—part of the cost of getting his soul back. That task seems simple: escort a young human from England to New York. The young man, Augustus Sanderson, is an alchemist, but seems not to be particularly powerful. Callum is immediately taken with him, both for his looks, and for his goodness.
We all know from the start that it’s not going to be so simple, but I confess that the mess Callum and Auggie find themselves in is darker and more violent than I expected. It is also fascinating because of the author’s gift with description and character. He gives us a fast-paced plot full of twists and turns—all of which Callum is unprepared for. What starts out as a simple trip across the sea become a “Lord of the Rings” level quest. Forces are at work that Callum doesn’t understand, and it becomes clear that the world of witches is rife with greed and the lust for power.
Callum certainly isn’t greedy or seeking power. All he wants to do is deliver Auggie safely to New York and get his soul back. Then he can live a quiet life and be free of obligation. Of course, he gets something he didn’t bargain for.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
