While I think everyone has had a job that they were desperate to leave at some point in their life, no one has ever been as desperate as the eponymous protagonist of The Witch of Tophet County, the delightfully chaotic and entertaining novel by J.H. Schiller. The Witch only has a few weeks left to somehow get out of her contract with the Elder Gods that have taken over the world (the story is hilarious). If she can’t find a way out, she has to work for them forever or until her untimely death. Standing in the Witch’s way are a host of whacky distractions, clients who want a quick hex, and a mystery that only she can solve.
The opening scene of The Witch of Tophet County couldn’t have been more perfect for hooking me on a book. We meet the Witch in the Tophet County Public Library, digging through arcane tomes, looking for a way out of her employment contract. The tomes are noisy on their shelves when a likely-looking volume comes to her attention just as the call comes that the library is going to close. The Witch does her best to steal the book only to get banned from the library. Again. Frustrated, the Witch returns home to her whisky and her raccoon familiar, Keyser Söze. It’s even easier to understand the Witch’s frustration with her situation when we follow her to work and she finds out that her first client of the day wants a spell to make her husband fall back in love with her.
There is never a dull moment in The Witch of Tophet County. Part of the not-dullness comes from the fact that the Witch lives in a magical world ruled by the whims of the Elder Gods. Another part of the not-dullness comes from the Witch herself. As a dedicated follower of Discordia, the Witch cultivates chaos wherever she goes as part of her religious expression. In rapid succession, we are introduced to the sinister County Clerk and Director of HR (both definitely inhuman), a long-suffering IT technician (human), the new mayor (human but involved with an MLM), and more. Every character in this book is wonderfully weird. We also learn that something mysterious is going on. The Witch is dragooned into investigating first one, then another apparent murder of an Elder God.
I don’t want to say too much more about this book because part of the joy of reading The Witch of Tophet County is looking for the joking references to H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, laughing at the puns, cheering the Witch’s pranks, and untangling the wild plot. I had a great time reading this book. I’m going to keep an eye out for more from J.H. Schiller.