The Fall 2024 Light Novel Guide

Witch and Mercenary

What's It About? 

Nothing in this world is more dangerous than a witch. The epitome of fear and terror, they can summon floods on a whim, conjure balls of fire out of the air, or even destroy entire countries overnight. Incur their wrath, and no one is safe.

At least, that's what everyone thinks, and it's the very reason they all want Siasha dead. After yet another violent battle for her life, she teams up with Zig, a mercenary, and they depart for unknown lands to find somewhere she can live in peace. But is the pair any match for the lost magic and vicious monstrosities that lie ahead?

Witch and Mercenary is written by Chohokiteki Kaeru and featured illustrations by Kanase Bench. English translation by L. Kino and edited by Regina Geronimo. Published under Seven Seas' Airship imprint (October 8, 2024).

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Although Witch and Mercenary isn't isekai, in some ways that's the easiest word to use to describe it. Siasha and Zig don't technically go to another world. Their journey begins on a continent that's essentially late Medieval Europe and then unfolds on a different continent that's RPG-inspired fantasy. All they do is cross an ocean, but they may as well have gone to another world entirely. On their home continent, Siasha is reviled and hunted as a witch (Zig is initially a mercenary hired to kill her), one of the only beings who can use magic. There are monsters, but they're not monster monsters; more like larger versions of regular animals. But on the other continent, everyone can use magic, there are adventurers and an adventurers' guild, and creatures known as monstrosities, horrific animals like pouch wolves (marsupial wolves) and sky squid. It's so utterly different from what Zig and Siasha have always known.

Siasha is positively thrilled that books on magic are so readily available and that she doesn't have to hide her ability to use it, while Zig is trying to figure out how to navigate their new habitat. His confusion at the existence of adventurers and how mercenaries are looked down upon as little better than criminals is probably the strongest element of the story. He's trying to reconcile what he's always known with completely new concepts, and a late-volume meeting with another mercenary from his homeland shows that not everyone is as flexible as he is. Of course, it helps that he has Siasha with him; the only reason he's on this new continent (recently “discovered”) is that she hired him to protect her, an odd choice for a witch to make to the one survivor of the task force sent to murder her. Zig is nothing if not honorable, and if he's a bit flexible on the whole killing-for-money thing, that's because it's the only way he could survive. While his new acquaintances view mercenaries as reprehensible for that very thing, as far as Zig and Siasha are concerned, needs must, and sometimes you just have to stab someone so that they don't stab you.

This approach to writing a sword and sorcery fantasy novel does have its pitfalls, the most egregious of which is the constant overexplaining of how adventurer ranks and the guild work. Fight scenes can also be excessively drawn out, although the author manages to slip solid world-building details into them, primarily on the creature front. Siasha risks being a little too naïve for her own good, although by the end of the book we can see that that's more a marker of her enthusiasm than her lack of knowledge; Zig sees her as innocent, but she's got a lot more going on in her situational awareness than he's giving her credit for. Overall this is a pretty good read, and if it stumbles at times, it still manages to stay upright and deliver an enjoyable story.

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