An unforgettable, high-stakes, laugh-out-loud funny novel, The Witchstone blends the merciless humor of The Good Place with the spellbinding fantasy of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
Meet Laszlo, eight-hundred-year-old demon and Hell’s least productive Curse Keeper. From his office beneath Midtown, he oversees the Drakeford Curse, which involves a pathetic family upstate and a mysterious black stone. It’s a sexy enough assignment—colonial origins, mutating victims, et cetera—but Laszlo has no interest in maximizing the curse’s potential; he’d rather sunbathe in Ibiza, quaff martinis, and hustle the hustlers on Manhattan’s subway. Unfortunately, his division has new management, and Laszlo’s ratings are so abysmal that he’s given six days to shape up or he’ll be melted down and returned to the Primordial Ooze.
Meet Maggie Drakeford, nineteen-year-old Curse Bearer. All she’s ever known is the dreary corner of the Catskills where the Drakeford Curse has devoured her father’s humanity and is rapidly laying claim to her own. The future looks hopeless, until Laszlo appears at the Drakeford farmhouse one October night and informs them that they have six days—and six days only—to break the spell before it becomes permanent. Can Maggie trust the glib and handsome Laszlo? Of course not. But she also can’t pass up an opportunity to save her family, even if it means having a demon as a guide …
Thus begins a breakneck international adventure that takes our unlikely duo from a hot dog stand in Central Park to the mountains of Liechtenstein, a five-star hotel in Zurich, and even the time-traveling vault of a demonic crime boss. As the clock ticks down, tough-as-nails Maggie and conniving Laszlo will uncover a secret so profound that what began as a farcical quest to break a curse will eventually threaten the very Lords of Hell.
I got into a reading rut in December and just decided to grab something from my to-read list on Libby.
It’s quite a fun read! Laszlo, who is a demonic conman, has a new boss and has to really hop off his ass and get moving to push the misery of the humans carrying the curse he maintains. Meanwhile, the aforementioned humans— the monster-ifying Drakefords— are sitting in the Catskills and are watching yet another long turn of the cycle of despair. So of course Laszlo bursts in, blows up their toilet after eating a bad burrito, and proceeds to lie through his teeth about breaking their curse to get their hopes up so he could crush em.
The plot demands the fetching of several MacGuffins and taking off to Europe, all within 6 days. We get demons overseas, horrific curse-induced horniness, and people trying desperately to communicate with our monolinguistic Americans and tell them VERY important things. I pulled out good ‘ol Google Translate and yeah, confirmed, VERY important.
It’s a very straightforward plot. Much of the twists and turns are settled off-screen (Laszlo asked. The Signora laughs. “Yes, okay, we will do that.”) and we have a trust child sidekick who really lightens the mood. Laszlo is terminally unserious as well, so this book is 90% comedy, 10% Maggie trying to figure out what the hell is going on and how to deal with her change. Between Lump, Maggie, and Laszlo, they unravel what turns out to be a bigass conspiracy.
There is no romance and it never even begins to HINT at such a thing. Laszlo is an unabashed piece of shit, but a loveable piece of shit. Lump is interested in being a Gifted Child. Maggie is comfortable in finding herself and remaining single until she is ready, though she mentions she is not interested in having kids or anything. It’s really just a weird band of people going out and changing their lives. Very “it’s the journey, not the destination”.
And it’s fucking funny. I’ll probably be picking this one up for the physical collection.
