Witch Hunter: Into the Outside by J. Z. Foster

CreateSpace, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1974522255

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Witch Hunter: Into the Outside by J.Z. Foster is a tongue-in-cheek, ghoulish farce.  Richard, a picked-upon, chubby nebbish, is a member of a group of nerds dedicated to combating supernatural evil.  He suspects that the members are only half serious about their rituals, array of holy weapons and clandestine attacks against evil.  Richard entices Beth, an ambitious, would-be, TV reporter, and Ted, her cameraman, to accompany them on a hunt for a local witch.

Although Richard’s goal is to track down the warlock with a sanctified knife, a necklace with a cross, holy water and a book of spells, none of the small group expects anything to come from the expedition. To their shock, they encounter a series of horrors, including a wight with an insatiable, ravenous appetite, a noxious, deceptive daeva, and murderous sankai with faces of children and bodies of animals.   The confrontations escalate into a showdown with a plague warlock, who has caused stillbirths, deformed births in animals, and other catastrophes in their local community.

With the exception of Richard, most of the characters are one-dimensional, but readers will be caught up in the fast-placed plot.  The chapters alternate between the witch hunters’ increasingly harrowing adventures and Richard’s jailhouse interrogation after he is accused of murdering Beth.  Readers will empathize with his struggle to confront his self-doubt, fears and loneliness.  As Beth wrote,

“He was more than the coward he though he was, or the fumbling nervous man he appeared to be.  Richard was proof that we could all become something greater.  When faced with the impossible, Richard stood.  Richard was the hope of man, and proof that our destinies are unwritten.  Richard was proof that our fates are our own.”

Highly recommended.

Contains: rare obscenity

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee