New Review: The Wolf's Eye

One week to go until The Wolf’s Eye release! This is the second book in The Order of the Seven Stars series. For a limited time you can pick up book one, The Witch’s Lens, for no additional cost as part of your Prime membership benefits on Amazon. If you don’t like waiting for the second book to come out, now’s the time to read the series!

And I have to thank The Historical Novel Society for their wonderful review of The Wolf’s Eye!! Full review below.

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“Set during WWI on the Eastern Front, The Wolf’s Eye makes a strong followup as the second book in Smith’s Order of the Seven Stars historical fantasy series. The magical main character, Petra Kurková, and her found family of fellow witches are assigned the hateful task of tracking down and killing soldiers cursed to transform each full moon into a kind of werewolf called vlkodlak. The central challenge for them is that one of their crew was bitten by a vlkodlak early in the war and fights the curse only with the help of an elixir that he no longer has. That they may need to kill him is especially hard for Petra, who has fallen in love with Josef. With the full moon less than a month away, the magical group is running out of time to find a cure. They return to the hometown city and begin to uncover a way to save Josef, using secrets from Petra’s past.
As with the first book in this series, Smith engagingly develops the themes of friendship, loyalty, and the value of the family you choose for yourself. The bashful and gradual romance between Josef and Petra gives sweetness to this fairly dark book. For those who enjoy the revelation of the “scientific” mechanics of magic, The Wolf’s Eye will be highly satisfying. Despite occasional slowdowns in the plot’s momentum, Smith builds characters the reader actively roots for and throws them into exciting danger that only their loyalty to each other can overcome. An entertaining, intelligent historical fantasy.” - Historical Novel Society

One Month to Go!

Fantasy is one of those genres where multiple books in a series is the norm, but there's always that big gap between finishing the first book and waiting for the next one to drop. I often see an uptick in interest on the first book just before the second releases. I suspect there's a subset of readers who prefer to wait until a series is complete before diving in to the first book. I’m the same when I’m invested in a story. I gotta know what happens next!

The Order of the Seven Stars series will be complete when THE WOLF'S EYE publishes on May 14th. In case you're one of those readers who waits. 😉

Universal Magic

I recently had a reader write to me because she’d noticed small connections between some of my books. Since I have three different series of books out, she wondered if that was intentional. I was thrilled she’d noticed!

Yes, all of my books published to date are tangentially connected! The series are separated by decades and geography, but the magic is fairly consistent. The witches have auras to distinguish them from mortals, they use rhyming incantations to connect with the All Knowing, and there is a reliance on grimoires and herbs for concocting spells. But there are small but direct connections too.

[Minor spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the books yet]

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For instance:

~ In The Raven Spell, Ian, the witch detective, had worked on a case years earlier that involved the mutilation of small animals and a poisoning attempt on Sir Henry Elvanfoot. Gruesome, yes, but it was meant as a hint about a certain murderer in The Vine Witch who’s using the same modus operandi. The Raven Spell takes place in 1899, ten years before the The Vine Witch in 1909, so this character was already up to no good! Afraid of being caught, they’d quickly absconded for mainland Europe.

~ More obviously, a character from The Vine Witch series shows up in The Witch’s Lens, which takes place in 1915. Yanis was the sorcerer helping Elena, Yvette, and Sidra in The Conjurer. Six years later he’s been reinstated with the Order of the Seven Stars and assigned to a special unit during WW1. There is a reference to Elena in The Witch’s Lens as well, as she is the one who devised the Lingua Franca spell that allows witches from different regions to communicate with each other during The Great War.

~There is also a vague reference to Sidra in The Wolf’s Eye when the character Hugo Reitman talks about having jinn he relies on for various tasks.

~ But maybe the biggest connection tying the three series together is the mention of Lady Everly’s Grimoire in each of the novels. I included it in each story because it was meant to represent the guidebook for witches across Europe at the time. The woman herself even makes an appearance in The Raven Song as host of a masked ball.

So those are some of the sneaky connections I included in the books. As always, if you have any questions or observations about any of my novels, feel free to ask either here using the website contact form or you can contact me on IG @writersmith1.

out may 14th!

The sun and moon's relevance in ancient alchemy play a large part in the outcome of this novel. On May 14th you can find out why it's a thin line between curse and cure. 🌛🌞🌜

Pre-Order the sequel to THE WITCH’S LENS at these shops:

Amazon Target Barnes&Noble

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Under the full moon of World War I, a baleful curse threatens to tear apart a witch’s found family in a novel by the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Raven Spell.

Petra Kurková—a witch who wields magic worth its weight in gold—is tasked with combating the undead on World War I’s eastern front. The battlefield has yielded a newfound closeness for her spellbound team, especially for Josef Svoboda, a recruiter for the Order of the Seven Stars. But Josef was bitten at the start of the war, leaving his blood tainted by a strain of the vlkodlak curse, which makes him a target of the Order’s latest mission: slay the werewolves prowling the eastern front under the moonlight.

Petra refuses to give up on one of their own. From the hasty kill order of a clandestine society to the long-lost spells in an old grimoire to the unraveling mysteries of Petra’s own past, the urgency to save Josef grows, particularly as his feral impulses become harder to control. The werewolves are closing in. So, too, are the bounty hunters eager to collect. As Petra’s team finds itself at a magical crossroads, Josef devises an ambush of his own—one that could wipe out the cursed threat forever or endanger everything and everyone he loves.

New Novels Coming!

I don’t think I mentioned it here yet, but I’ve got two new novels in the works. The first, tentatively titled THE GOLDEN AGE OF MAGIC, which I’m working on now, is due for release in 2025 from 47North. Its follow-up will probably be out the following year. The first book takes place in Hollywood, 1926. I’ve been having a lot of fun researching for this one by going through vintage photos of silent movie stars and the fabulous costumes they wore. I mean, how do you top this old-school glamour?

The fabulous Gloria Swanson.

Meanwhile, THE WOLF’S EYE will be out May 14th, so keep an eye out for its release! Pre-orders are always welcome! And much thanks to those of you who’ve read and reviewed THE WITCH’S LENS!! Much appreciated.