Ink Witch is an urban fantasy without the worn-out tropes I see everywhere else. No vampires, no werewolves, and no zombies. Instead, she is a Nejeret, a goddess of time and immortal – mostly. She’s also a retired assassin, doing her best to hide out from the other Nejerets and an extended family that’s spans a few thousand years. Her particular power is in fortune telling, via tarot and other inks that morph to reveal hidden truths to her. Thus, she has earned the nickname Ink Witch by the Seattle locals.
Then years after comfortably hiding, a cousin-of-sorts finds her to ask her help. Other Nejerets have gone missing, and the powers that be have been unable to find them. She’s done with working for those powers (the mysterious Senate), but when she finds out that one of the missing is her half-brother and mentor, she’s on board. But she’s still distrustful and wants to work alone. You can guess how that turns out.
She runs into conspiracies, secrets, and old friends who might no longer be on her side. Will she find her half-brother in time to save him? And if she can’t, will he be forever lost, or can she use her talents with inks to hang on to a piece of him? It’s a fun romp through magic and mayhem that I had a hard time putting down.
I should say up front that this story caught me off guard, because it really did seem to be starting right in the middle of things, or perhaps, just after some serious stuff has just happened. Well, it turns out it had. While this is book 1 of a trilogy, it turns out that it’s also kind of book 4 of the Echo Trilogy that preceded it. However, you can be sure I’ll be going back to read that trilogy soon as I wait for the rest of this new trilogy to finish up.
About the reviewer:
Dan Thompson started writing fiction at the age of ten. Luckily for the world, all copies of that early Star Wars rip-off have been lost to time and Sith retaliation. Moving on from that six-page handwritten epic, he has self-published two books with more on the way – honest!
He lives near Austin with his wife and three children, drives old police cars, wears kilts when the weather permits, and is generally considered to be the weirdo next door. Fortunately, the neighbors don’t know how weird he really is.
Find out more about Dan at http://www.danthompsonwrites.com
Nathan Lowell has been writing science fiction and fantasy most of his life. He started publishing in 2007 and has no intention of stopping any time soon.
Keith Hughes is an author and podcaster who has participated in and won NaNoWriMo five times. He has two time travel novels available on the free Podiobooks.com serialized audiobook platform, and also on Amazon as ebooks. He hosts a quasi-daily podcast where he talks about a variety of topics on his commute. Keith is also hard at work editing the third installment in his time travel series, with a planned release for late 2016. You can find more information about Keith and his works at 
As a boy I escaped the real world by reading everything from The Hardy Boys to darker tales by Poe and Jacobs. Even with such diverse literary tastes, my primary interest has always been science fiction. I also created my own stories in high school and college, but never considered writing anything long form until 2006. That’s when an abandoned roadside attraction called Twin Arrows sparked an idea for a story.
