Trigger warning for rape and brief mentions of torture.
Death is one of the few inevitables in our world. In Khana’s world, Death is open to a good bargain. Centuries before Khana’s birth, Yamueto began to trade with death for power and immortality. Now he conquers country after country. Nowhere is safe for long. Khana’s only hope for escape in C.M. Alongi’s highly original new novel, The Witch Who Trades With Death, is to harness the emperor’s most closely guarded secret and attempt to change the world.
Khana is one of the most reluctant heroes I’ve ever read about. I can’t blame her for her cowardice, however. Ever since she was discovered to be a witch and sent to Emperor Yamueto as a girl, Khana has kept a low profile. Yamueto frequently tortures, rapes, and kills people who displease him. Unfortunately, Khana fails to avoid the emperor’s eye on one very bad day. That very bad day leads Khana to attempt a frantic (and nearly futile) escape from Yamueto’s palace. The only thing that saves her life is a deal with Death.
No one—not even someone who can bargain with Death itself—can survive on their own. After her impossible escape, Khana finds refuge among the people who guard the mountain passes against Yamueto and his monstrous night creatures. She works and uses her magic to heal the injured and sick in exchange for food and shelter. She makes friends, even a kind of adopted family. It’s a good enough life, at least until word reaches the mountains that Yamueto is looking for his lost concubine. Once again, Khana is torn between her fear of Yamueto and her terror at fighting back against an unbeatable enemy.
There was a lot I enjoyed about The Witch Who Trades With Death. I’m a big fan of originality in fantasy and this book avoids a lot of the tired tropes of the genre. Men and women are soldiers. Khana is (for much of the book) the only damsel in need of rescue and sheer desperation pushes her to figure out her next move before anyone else manages to swoop in. Khana struggles with cowardice and has to grow a lot in order to find her courage—which I think is a much more challenging road than heroes who charge right out of their homes to do battle.
All that said, there were two things that bothered me about The Witch Who Trades With Death. The first thing is a trifle: I was annoyed by the lack of effort Alongi made to have the dialog sound like people who live in a different world. I winced whenever a character said the word “okay.” The second thing still troubles me. Because Khana can make some extraordinary deals with Death, I wondered if magic cheated the emotional toll of actual death. I don’t want to say too much and ruin the book, so I’ll wrap up by saying that there are a few bargains in this book that I felt took a lot of the emotional punch out of the plot.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.