One For My Enemy

February 6, 2023
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.