One For My Enemy
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In New York City where we lay our scene, two rival witch families fight to maintain control of their respective criminal ventures. The Antonova sisters are beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, and their mother, known only as Baba Yaga, is the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants. On the other side, the influential Fedorov brothers serve their father, the crime boss known as Koschei the Deathless, whose enterprise dominates the shadows of magical Manhattan.
For twelve years, they have coe-xisted in a fraught stalemate. But when bad blood brings both families to the precipice of disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter. Now, with deadly conflict on the horizon, everyone must choose a side. As the siblings struggle to stake their claim, fraying loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Feuding magical families take center stage in this fascinating but convoluted fantasy from Blake (The Atlas Six). When Baba Yaga, the matriarch of a gifted family of witches, refuses to marry Koschei the Deathless, the patriarch of the most fearsome magical crime ring in Manhattan, she inadvertently starts a cold war. Baba Yaga raises her first daughter, Marya Antonova, to be a lethal and loyal weapon, while Koschei does the same with his own heir, Dimtri Federov. The tension between the families grows for 12 years until the Federovs make the first move, prompting a deadly response from the Antonovas. But when the neglected youngest adult children from each family, Sasha and Lev, meet and fall in love, their family loyalties are tested as they search for a way to end the cycle of vengeance. The Romeo and Juliet–esque romance is emotional and well done, and the familial relationships carry real weight, but the expansive cast—who all go by multiple nicknames—can be difficult to keep straight, and the characters' many motivations feel underexplored in myriad subplots that go nowhere. Blake's poetic language ("Roman had a spine like lightning, footfall like thunder") occasionally further obscures the action. It's a solid premise, but the execution is lacking.
