Many years ago I became aware of Shamus Young by way of his intensely funny webcomic, DM of the Rings. It used screenshots of the Lord of the Rings movies to posit the entire ring quest as a D&D game played by particularly vapid, and amoral PCs. It was a lot of fun.
Later I found Shamus’ blog, Twenty Sided, and another, similarly themed webcomic, Chainmail Bikini. (There have been other, equally worthy items on Shamus’ list, but I’d really like to get to the book here eventually.) Suffice to say, I was enough of a fan that when I heard that Shamus had written a novel, I was happy to go Kindle shopping and pick it up. Having read it now, I am even happier I did.
It is not always easy to switch forms. A webcomic is entirely a different beast from a video game review, and while I knew the author did both flawlessly, they are also both completely different from a long-form novel.
I needn’t have worried.
The Witch Watch is a gaslight and steam novel of Victorian England coming to terms with a modernizing trend of necromancers, wizards, and undead. Fortunately for the good guys, the necromancers in question reanimate the wrong corpse, and provide us with Gilbert, our undead main character. Gilbert’s adventures with the titular Witch Watch, the organization charged with hunting down and eliminating supernatural threats, provide the fun, and keep the pages turning. It is an entertaining concept, well executed, and a stellar first stab at the novel market. (While his first wholly independent novel, it is the author’s third book. His other two are the autobiography, How I Learned, and the fan-fic novel Free Radical, based on the game, System Shock.)
The writing style is reminiscent of both Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book, yet it remains singularly the author’s own voice. Funny, grumpy, thrilling, and caring, this book was more than worth the $5.00 price for the Kindle version. At $19.99, the paperback is pricey, but I would still not hesitate to recommend it to fans of the author’s, or similar works and writers.
Sign up for the Orven Newsletter
Get your monthly dose of humor and book updates in your inbox.
Unsubscribe any time. We will never share or sell your email. Because, that's just rude.
I have bought his other two books in paperback form, and Witch Watch just arrived a couple of days ago. I haven’t got round to reading it yout though.
I feel the same way about kindle books as I do with digital download games: It is kind of nice, but I don’t really feel that I *own* the thing, more that I am borrowing it.
So, if there is something uber cheap I might get it, but if there is a dead tree version, I prefer that.
If you want to read the classics, then the kindle is well worth it. I understand that they have all the classic books for free.
I guess for me it’s just about convenience. The ownership thing isn’t as much of an issue for me, a file is as good as paper as far as I’m concerned.
I know that on Amazon, I actually make more money on a $5.00 ebook than a $15.00 paper one. That kinda highlights the waste inherent in printing a book.
None of this is to suggest that you shouldn’t get exactly what it is that you really want. It’s your money, and if you’re going to spend it, you should have the right to have your book in whatever format suits you.
Yeah; I actually work in IT, but other than games, I am pretty much a technophobe in that I don’t use that much modern technology.
I still have books I bought from over 20 years ago, but I have lost files that I had less than 5 years ago, which pretty much sums up my attitude towards ebooks.
With games, if the price is much lower (like 75%) of games, I don’t mind paying for digital copies, but I still prefer to have it on disc.