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. 😉

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 Trade Review: The Witch's Lens

I’m delighted to share this latest review for The Witch’s Lens. Founded in 1997, The Historical Novel Society is a literary society dedicated to promoting the genre of historical fiction in all its forms, and I thank them for this review!

Full Review:

Set during WWI in the Carpathian Mountains, The Witch’s Lens adds a fantastical layer to the horror of the Great War. Alongside soldiers with rifles and artillery, witches wage battles with curses and spells, and something worse, the resurrected dead turned into bloodthirsty monsters.

In a nearby city, Petra struggles after her husband goes to fight. He has left her a camera as a gift, and she wanders at night snapping pictures on instinct. Unseen ghosts appear in the developed pictures. She’s a witch, but for years she’s buried her abilities and never knew of this one. The novel reveals her complex past slowly, as a mysterious man recruits her into a band of witches to fight on the front. As counterweight to the novel’s grimness, Petra develops bonds of friendship that allow her and the others to perform extraordinary acts of courage to save ordinary soldiers like her husband.

Smith develops the WWI historical world effectively and thus grounds the fantasy in a dark, gripping reality. However, her magical details are even more impressive, blending Eastern European folk motifs and legends with gruesome imagination. An early appearance of an undead soldier shows her talent for evocative description: “The stench of the creature’s breath and the clammy fishlike color of his skin nauseated her even from two meters away…a fully fleshed-out creature with teeth bared and bloodlust churning in its veins.”

Smith puts the historical horrors of the “war to end all wars” through a prism that both amplifies and elucidates the degree of evil that war unleashes on the world, all while telling a spellbinding, captivating story. As antidote to this dark theme, Smith portrays the redeeming idea of loyalty and sacrifice that transcends evil.

~ Available from 47North on Amazon. Don’t forget to preorder the follow up novel, THE WOLF’S EYE. ~

Cover Reveal for The Wolf's Eye!

I’m so excited to share the cover to The Wolf’s Eye, the second book in The Order of the Seven Stars series. In this installment, the members of the Order’s eastern front team are on their way back to Prague. But before they can arrive home, they’re given a new task: rid the battlefield of all evidence of the wolf curse. Knowing a certain member of the team falls under the directive, Petra and the others use the time they have between full moons to find the cure they were promised, and end up discovering so much more as the past gets churned up and reveals its secrets.

*Thanks to Kimberly Glyder for the beautiful cover design!

*As always, you can pre-order The Wolf’s Eye on Amazon.

Out May 14, 2024