Kane’s Cross Witchfinder

Kane’s Cross: Witchfinder

(Book Two in the Witchfinder Series 2)

by E. M. G. Wixley

Review by Barry Boy

Kane’s Cross by E. M. G. Wixley is a novel of the genre Fantasy written in the third-person. The time period is current and the location is the United Kingdom.

We meet the two main characters right at the beginning of Kane’s Cross, when Kane, a drunken, if not alcoholic ex-servicemen, who seems to be suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, rescues Poppy, ‘a young girl’, from an assailant on the street, and they run away together down to the West Country.

Poppy saves them from impoverishment by using skills. She insists that she has learned these from her own kind, whom she says that those who live on the surface of the planet often call witches. They then head back north to Kane’s home town, where he hopes to be able to stay with one of his separated parents until he sorts himself out..

However, it seems that his dysfunctional family are also involved with witches, but on the other side. Unbeknownst to most, the Catholic Church is still carrying out a vendetta against witches, and Kane’s two younger brothers are members of that Holy Army against the Forces of Darkness. In fact, they are so fanatical that they have already murdered their older sister on suspicion of being a witch.

Mayhem

Meanwhile, their mother and father stand by apparently oblivious to the mayhem going on around them, or perhaps that is why they seem to be so useless as parents. Kane has inadvertently led Poppy into danger by taking her home.

The rest of Kane’s Cross has Kane twisting and turning, ducking and diving, and generally going through a paranormal Hell trying to keep Poppy safe. Her own people are also attempting to do the same for all of their community.

Eventually, they find a solution, which suggests that they should all begin a new life in the Promised Land overseas, and so, they set off for it, but without Kane. He has one more task to accomplish before he can join them.

Kane’s Cross is a ‘fantasy novel’ and it can be difficult to see why some things happen in fantasy novels, because, anything can happen in a fantasy! It is perhaps the only genre in which the author is free to write literally whatever he or she likes. Ms Wixley does just that, but weaves interesting characters into a twisting plot all the while.

I enjoyed Kane’s Cross: Witchfinder (Book Two in the Witchfinder Series 2) by E. M. G. Wixley. I would give it a five-star rating, but for the quirky use of commas. And then there’s the title, which does not seem relevant to the plot. However, maybe I missed something. The text has definitely not been professionally edited, and would be improved greatly if it were to be.