After wiping out witches all around the country, there’s only one place left for Robin Martine to go: home. A witch-hunting Youtube star returns to her hometown and confronts her past in Burn the Dark, the first book in S. A. Hunt’s fantasy/horror series Malus Domestica. If that title sounds familiar, it may be because the series spent several years as a self-published top-seller on Amazon. But last week, Burn the Dark finally came out in print from a traditional publisher, and can now be found on shelves at your local bookstore!
Most of the world refuses to believe that witches are real. At first, Robin tried to tell the truth, only to end up in a mental institution, pumped full of anti-psychotics. Now she takes advantage of this disbelief and makes a sweet salary by posting her encounters with witches on Youtube under the guise of fiction. But all the money in the world means nothing to Robin while the witches that killed her mother are still alive. To rectify this, Robin returns to the rural town of Blackfield, ready to piece together her past and take on the legendary Lazenbury coven. Along the way, she picks up an unlikely band of allies: Joel, her childhood best friend; Kenway, a surprisingly soft ex-military man; and Wayne, the young kid who has recently moved with his father into Robin’s old family home. Together, they face the supernatural horrors that lurk underneath the surface of Blackfield’s small-town life. But it turns out that the town may hold something even scarier than the country’s oldest and most powerful witches.
My favorite part of this book is the world-building, which blends horror and fantasy in equal measure. The witches of Burn the Dark are not nature-loving New Age folks or eccentric little old ladies, however much they may cultivate those stereotypes for their own advantage. Instead, they are villainous creatures who have become immortal by sacrificing their hearts to the goddess of the underworld and by sucking out the life force of the community around them. They maintain their youth and vigor by sacrificing others and turning them into trees that bear magical blood-fruit, and they slaughter innocents in order to water those trees with a constant supply of blood. Each instance of magic being used in this book is a scene worthy of the goriest horror movie. Meanwhile, the preteen Wayne has magical abilities that are more fantastical in nature. Holding his mother’s wedding band up to his eye allows him to see into other planes of existence and to open doors that weren’t there a moment before.
Speaking of horror movies, let’s talk about the haunted house. At the heart of this book is 1168 Underwood Road, a classic Queen Anne Victorian house with spiraling staircases, a quaint cupola bedroom, and a very dark history. It’s the house where Robin grew up and where she watched her mother die. Now it’s Wayne’s house and he’s pretty sure it’s haunted. Even the Lazenbury witches seem afraid of whatever lurks inside. I can’t say too much more without going into spoiler territory, but I will say that I appreciate the way that Burn the Dark plays off some very classic haunted house tropes, while creating a haunting that’s uniquely terrifying.
If you want to check out Burn the Dark for yourself, you can find it at your local bookstore, or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process by clicking on this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Be sure to come back and share your thoughts when you finish!