Being a curse keeper is an easy gig. It’s so easy, in fact, that Laszlo hasn’t had to bother with any actual work for decades. Laszlo spends his days alternately messing with and seducing humans until his cushy life comes to a screaming halt when a demon a few rungs higher on the ladder is sent to check up on the curse keepers, to make sure the cursed are as miserable as possible. Lazslo is fucked. He knows he’s fucked, but he doesn’t want to go down without a fight. Henry H. Neff’s wild novel, The Witchstone, sucked me right in. It’s got snarky demons, goofy side characters, hellish bureaucracy, escalating stakes, perfect plot twists, and weird sense of heart.
When the overseer tells Laszlo that the cursed people he’s supposed to be minding could feel even worse than they already do (the curse is pretty heinous, so this is saying something), Laszlo manages to make a deal. If he can make his curse bearers the most miserable they have ever been and/or get a human to give up their soul, he will not be returned to the infernal ooze. Because hell loves making deals, the overseer agrees and gives Laszlo six days to get the job done.
Maggie, one of the cursed Drakefords, lives a pretty miserable existence. She has to serve as her backwoods town’s sin-eater. That’s not the curse. The curse is that every member of the Drakeford family will eventually turn into a monster, wracked with pain in their transformed bodies until they die. There is no cure. There is no hope. At least, there’s no hope until a dapper Laszlo shows up at the family home and offers them a chance at breaking the curse.
I had no idea where The Witchstone was going to take me next. The plot whisks us from the woods of upstate New York, to the big city itself, to Europe, and even a small patch of hell. Maggie and Laszlo seek out the items they need to break the curse, while Maggie’s little brother Lump tags along. There are battles with cave monsters, magic going awry, ill-timed lust, and so much more. I honestly fell in love with the characters, even though Maggie is prickly and Laszlo has to be up to something nefarious (demon). Lump is absolutely adorable. My heart was in my mouth for most of the book because nothing was easy in this story, but like Maggie and Lump, I couldn’t help but hope that the curse would be broken.
The Witchstone is one of the most original books I’ve read in a long time. Even though Neff uses old tropes like dealing with the devil and curses, everything he does with them is blended with a delightful sarcasm that refuses to take most anything seriously. I say most anything because this book has a bloody beating heart underneath all the mayhem that’s going to stay with me long after I forget most of the silliness and gore.