'Witchmark' - Book Review

by C. L. Polk
Tor, 318p

This is apparently C. L. Polk's first book. I thought it got off to a fairly good start with decent writing and a sort of hybrid 1920s/magic atmosphere (although much more accepting of homosexuality than the British-American city of the 1920s that the book seems to be invoking). Our protagonist is Miles Singer, a war veteran, doctor, and healer who works at a Veteran's Hospital. But he has to hide his magical skill as a healer, as he would be condemned as a "witch." And then there's his family: he's from one of the richest families in the country, but he ran off to war to escape his fate as a "Secondary," nothing but a power source to his sister who is considered to have more magical power than he has.

But in the first day we read about - after his being in the city for months after returning from the war - he runs into not one, but four people in one day who can reveal his secret. This is a higher level of coincidence than I think any author should use.

Her magic system also seems awfully vague and malleable to her needs as an author - she doesn't describe it well, and when she does it's to make it do what she needs toward the end of the book to serve the survival of her characters.

And then there's the romance. Our hero falls for one of the four people he encounters that first day, Tristan Hunter. But it's written like a bodice-ripper of the "so gorgeous my knees went weak" variety: generic and not particularly character-driven.

Sadly, I have one more accusation to level against the book. One of my current measures of the quality of writing in books and movies is that if I can predict where you're going with significant elements of the plot, you're doing it wrong. I'm not good or inventive at plotting, so if I can guess your moves, you're not working very hard. She fell down all over the place on that one: I had four or five major plot elements worked out by the midpoint of the book, and pretty much all of them landed as I expected in the last pages.

I think she has potential as an author, but will she be willing to put the effort into her craft to achieve that potential?