Book Review: WITCHY EYE, by D.J. Butler

An epic American fantasy saga of Biblical proportions

Imagine, dear reader, an alternate America where arcane Appalachian magic and religious revivals both grapple for converts to their cause. In the middle of it all, a teen girl learns the truth about her birth parents, that she’s the heir to an Eden-esque empire, and now she has to navigate treacherous political waters with a new set of powers that she doesn’t understand. Throw in a cast of varied and charismatic characters, and you have D.J. Butler’s Witchy War saga.

The Story

Sarah Calhoun is an Appalachee farmer who likes to poke fun at the local “New Light” preachers whenever she and her family take their farm goods to market. At the start of this story, she ends up pissing off the wrong guy, who takes notice of a birth defect that Sarah often tries to hide: the eponymous witchy eye. She doesn’t know why she has it, only that she always has, but this preacher seems to be very interested in it, in the worst way.

Soon Sarah is caught up in a struggle between two factions, one of which wants to control her, and the other of which wants to restore her to her birthright on a throne in Eden. She’s got to learn fast or things will go permanently sideways for a lot of people.

While this may seem an overly common storyline, it looks tremendously different with the Biblical lore behind it, as well as the various interested parties that Butler introduces to the tale. More on that in a moment.

The Characters

Not only does Sarah find out that the New Light preachers want to capture her, she’s adopted, and she’s a triplet. Somewhere out there she has a brother and a sister. They each bear marks of powerful magic from their parents—in her case, the eye—that allow them to interact with the magical forces of the world they live in.

Sarah sets off to find her siblings with the help of her nephew Calvin who, thanks to Appalachee family trees, is roughly the same age she is (they’re both mid-teens.) And once Calvin finds out she’s not actually in the family tree, well, side-eye tiiiiiiiiiiime. But he doesn’t make himself a nuisance with his newfound affections; he’s useful and loyal, as well as a believer, which he’ll need to be as he too learns more about the forces that want to capture Sarah.

They’re both helped by Thalanes, a traveling monk who finds Sarah and explains her ancestry, the war between mortality and the spirit world, and the need to reunite her with her siblings to stave off a paranormal invasion into our world.

My personal favorite is the gentleman swordsman for hire, Sir William Johnston Lee, known to the Louisiana criminal element as “Bad Bill.” He and Thalanes were part of the team that hid Sarah and the other children 15 years ago. Although he has debts to pay and a job to do, the moment he hears about Thalanes and Sarah, he saddles up to join the cause. He’s a man beset by vices and temptations, a sinner constantly in the act of repentance, and I love seeing his spiritual victories alongside his temporal ones.

The main baddie is the Right Reverend Father Ezekiel Angleton and his henchman, Obadiah Dogsbody—two names straight out of the Standard Guidebook For Villains. Angleton is the “New Light” preacher who’s actually working for the dark powers who want to kidnap Sarah. Obadiah is the idiot brute who does his heavy lifting. Sarah and Calvin will have to deal with both of them in different ways.

The World

Equal parts recognizable and distinct. This is a North America that refers to familiar places by different names— ‘Pennsland’ for Pennsylvania, for example. But the uniformity that we enjoy in our timeline doesn’t quite exist; nothing was homogenized to the extent that it has been in the real world, each different culture has its stronghold and Butler shows that he did his homework in shaping it. You’ve got your English, French, Cajun, the Igbo and other African tribes, Native Americans, and some fantasy species besides.

Behind the curtain of it all, you’ve got angelic and spiritual powers vying for their own little piece of it all, and they exert their influence over the mortal realm as they play their game.

The Politics

In-world only. Nothing “Current Year” in these pages.

Content Warning

Butler presents the less-savory elements of a 19th-century America with prose and tact; sensitive subjects like sex and violence are dealt with in classical vernacular, and the profanity stays on the softer side of PG-13.

Who is it for?

I always invoke Tolkien and Herbert for books of this scale, with worlds of detail pinning them up, details that enrich the story and reward the reader for multiple excursions through the pages. I’ve read WITCHY EYE three times and found this to be the case myself.

Why read it?

For one, this epic fantasy trilogy is actually finished. A fourth book has been written, and if it sells enough, a second trilogy will conclude. Butler isn’t going to George R. R. Rothfuss you on this one; he’s doing the writer part, he just needs the reader part.

Second, it’s an epic fantasy with the weight of biblical lore behind it, as Butler studied several real-world cultures, their languages (dead and alive), and their iterations of Judeo-Christianity to create something rich, vibrant, and spiritually moving.

You can pick up any number of 600-page fantasy doorstops that drag you through the swamp of overly explained worldbuilding, or you can pick up WITCHY EYE and find yourself in an epic fantasy world that is much more like our own than you might suspect.

I think I’m ready for a fourth reading, myself.