Warrior Witch

This is the first book in a trilogy that actually gets a good bit of positive press, and I can’t really see why that is. The Bloodsong trilogy first appeared in the 80’s, written by C. Dean Anderson under the name Asa Drake, as he already had a bit of momentum going under that name. The whole thing was later reprinted under his own name, getting a nice trade edition from Hawk Publishing in 2000. In the notes, Anderson makes much of being a student of Norse myth and history, which might lead you to expect a gritty, realistic adventure. You would be wrong.

The series follows the adventures of Bloodsong, a warrior-woman originally named Freyadis, but who has died and been brought back to life by the death-goddess Hel as a “Hel-Warrior” to ride against the sorcerer Nidhug. Nidhug was once Hel’s priest, but he has turned against her and he has the power of one of her artifacts – the War-Skull, which is depicted as just a huge skull partly embedded in the earth – which is admittedly kind of bitchin’.

I say “adventures” but really this book has an extremely linear and uninteresting plot. We start with Bloodsong some indeterminate distance from the castle of Nidhug, she rides toward it, and he uses various magical bullshit to try and stop her from getting there. That is literally all there is to it. He sends some demons or whatever to kill her, she fights them off, then he tries something else, and she defeats that. And so on. It is extremely tedious when you realize that nothing interesting is going to happen, and the same things will essentially repeat until the book is done. It’s like the plot of an arcade game.

Bloodsong is equipped with a ring that gives her various magical powers taught to her by Hel, and these are all referred to as “Hel-something” in a manner reminiscent of the old Batman show: Hel-horse, Hel-ring, Hel-fire, until you half-expect her to whip out the Hel-mobile.

The plot seems to begin in the middle of a larger story that I am just as glad I missed. Bloodsong has a past with a dead husband and dead child that are supposed to motivate her, but we never see them, so it fails to make for any kind of emotional connection. We just follow along with the “action” as she fights magical MacGuffins, and slices up human minions in scenes that are bloody, yet unexciting.

In between Bloodsong’s uninteresting plotline, we switch back to the POV of either Nidhug or one of his captives for some magical hugger-mugger and general unpleasantness, as we see the wizard forced to use the giant skull to keep himself young and vital by draining the life out of naked slaves. We have one slave who he tortures repeatedly through the book, paralyzing her, stabbing her, and then later locking her in a room to be raped to death by zombies. (The fact that said zombie raping does not actually happen is a great relief.) None of this serves any purpose, adds to drama or excitement, or reveals any interesting layers to the villain, who remains steadfastly two-dimensional. It all seems to just exist so we can have naked females brutalized every other chapter.

By the time the end comes you are far past caring. None of the magic seems to have any rules, the action remains flat, and Bloodsong seems to win kind of by accident. There are no interesting characters, no character moments that are not wholly cliche, no tension and no drama. No book that’s only 70,000 words should feel this long, or be this much of a slog. I have seen people hold this up as an overlooked classic, but a sweet Boris Vallejo cover does not make for a good, or even a tolerable book.