Though the quirky and thoughtful A World Made By Hand earned my respect with its post-technological world and its conflicted characters, embarrassingly little of that magic has been handed down to this second installment in what promises to be a lengthy series.
Where the prior book focused on Robert Earl and his fight for some semblance of justice in a world slowly surrendering to the depravities of feudal existence, The Witch of Hebron chooses to devote itself to a collection of incoherent characters, propelled towards one another by a series of mishaps which annoy and frustrate. As readers, we accept a certain amount of deus-ex-machina in our fiction; otherwise, it would take forever for a point to be reached. But the authorial hand must have some subtlety, some aspiration to being invisible, to allow the reader to forget that he is being guided towards a pre-determined conclusion. There is, here, sadly, no such subtlety. But for as aggravating as this clumsiness may be, the choice of protagonists is a most egregious fumble. For rather than capitalize on the complicated and familiar Earl, our focus shifts to the 15-year-old jasper, the son of a local doctor, who, after a misunderstanding with a local horse, flees Union Grove for an adventure in the broader world. But having gone only a short distance, he encounters a cartoonish bandit who forces the naive and innocent Jasper under his wing and into a violent adventure which ridiculously culminates in a series of supernatural incidents.
A World Made By Hand fascinated precisely because it had something to say and a new and thoughtful environment in which to say it. The Witch Of Hebron trades in both of these important charms in exchange for mystical tropes and unsympathetic souls who never provoke a moment's thoughtfulness or understanding. A major disappointment which smacks of an author not knowing how to continue an unexpected success. (2/5 Stars)
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