30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART, May 15, 2001
This review is from: Never Burn a Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (Mass Market Paperback)
NEVER BURN A WITCH is the second Rowan Gant Investigation, following HARM NONE.
Someone is running around St Louis with an apostolic way of thinking. They truly believe God is directing their path and that it is their duty to rid the earth of witches.
Brianna Louise Walker took a nosedive off of the sixth story balcony of the Riverfront Hilton handcuffed. The monogram of Christ was carved into her inner thighs by the murderer to purify her because of her profession. The second murder is even more gruesome.
Rowan Gant is back to help his best friend, police officer Ben Storm, because a serial killer is on the loose, and it's up to them to solve these murders before the next one occurs.
I found NEVER BURN A WITCH to have a very strong plot. It moves along at a fast pace and delivers lots of suspense. M.R. Sellers writes with such graphic descriptions that you feel you are there witnessing it with your own eyes. This is not a read for the faint of heart.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome Back to the Middle Ages, January 20, 2002
This review is from: Never Burn a Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (Mass Market Paperback)
Fresh from the previous volume, 'Harm None,' Rowan Gant is once again drawn into a police investigation by his good friend Benjamin Storm. As a public practitioner of Wicca in St. Louis, Gant often provides support when a case seems to have occult overtones. The first young woman is tortured and thrown out of her apartment, the second burnt in a public park. In each case symbols are found and a bible is left at the site with a marked quote.
Gant quickly recognizes that truth, which is confirmed by his psychic reading of the dead. A witch hunter is loose in the city, one that uses the medieval 'Malleus Maleficarum' as his manual, just like the original Inquisition. This time Rowan is warned of the deaths by the appearance of painful stigma on his body, shaped like the chi rho symbol of Christ. The murders proceed almost inexorably, claiming not just witches, but the innocent as well.
First the killer hunts the members of a coven, but when Rowan's investigations start to interfere, the St. Louis witch is added to the list of potential victims. Rowan now must hunt the hunter if he is to survive. In single minded pursuit he seems to loose his grasp on his own powers and repeatedly finds himself in conflict with his wife Felicity and his friend Benjamin. The witch seems compelled to reach the final confrontation in the worst possible fashion.
While quite readable, I found 'Never Burn a Witch' something of a disappointment after 'Harm None.' The latter showed quite a bit of promise, but the new book is suffering from a slight case of 'sophomore slump.' I found the book very repetitious in its early going - murder, crime scene, psychic vision, murder, crime scene, etc. As there is a lot of violence in this book this goes on for too long, and with very little relief, comic or otherwise. Almost no attention is paid to the killer, and progress to the ending is unsurprising and almost inexorable.
Gant, portrayed as a man of intelligence and integrity, inevitably seems to lose all his wisdom under pressure. And if I was his wife, I'd divorce him. He keeps telling her he won't do things and then promptly goes out and does them. My final gripe, and the worst, is that other than the psychic visitations with the murder victims and the appearance of the stigmata there really isn't a lot of 'witchiness' to the story. What occult is offered is mostly in the service of furthering the violence of the narrative rather than enriching the plot.
The story line seems to indicate that another volume is in the offing. If so, I hope M.R. Sellars takes the opportunity to deepen the dimensions of the plot a bit. He does have real writing talent, and this could become a very successful series. The book is really better than three stars, but is simply not up to its four star predecessor.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another excellent work by M. R. Sellers, June 25, 2002
This review is from: Never Burn a Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (Mass Market Paperback)
Eagerly anticipating this latest offering by Mr. Sellers, I was not disappointed. The characters of Rowan Gant, Felicity Gant, and Ben Storm are devleoped even further. The anticipation literally would not let me put the book down until I was done. It is refreshing to see a Pagan author writing fiction but showing a more "real" side of Pagan beliefs and attitudes. The supernatural elements in Gants' life are only slightly outside the realm of possibilities. The characters are real and situations (sadly) all too possible in this age of serial killers and media hype. Sellers presents his characters in very real fashion, and also gives a realistic view of people who live within this faith known as Wicca, as well as giving realistic and real to life reactions of those who come in contact with many people who are of this faith, both open minded or not. I own his first offering in this series and cannot keep it in my library as it keeps getting loaned out, only to be told they are having to buy their own copy. We can only hope that Sellers will be publishing for many years to come.
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