The Witch Who Trades with Death

Read Time: 3 Minutes

The Witch Who Trades with Death by C.M. Alongi is a dark fantasy that took a little while to grab me, and even once it did, it never quite held on as tightly as I’d hoped. That’s not to say it wasn’t worth listening to. If I had to say either liked it or disliked it, it’d be a like, but for me, it didn’t quite land as hard as I’d hoped for going in.

The story follows Khana, a witch who can absorb life force from other beings, a little like Rogue from X-Men if I were to draw a comparison. Not exact, but that general ballpark. It’s a rather potent and dangerous power, one that can heal, strengthen, or kill depending on how it’s used. I like the mechanic, that siphoning off of life and passing it to others or hoarding it for power or to heal yourself, but it also feels way overpowered.

More than once, Khana drops into a group of enemies and wipes them out with a burst of life draining magic. There’s still tension, but so long as there’s an enemy within reach, then she has a battery backup in reserve.

I thought the whole making trades with Death thing was interesting approach, but also fed into the OP nature of the ability. Given it could scale immensly depending on what you were willing to trade. I’d liked to have seen a little more of the scenes in this spirit world.

The worldbuilding leans hard into the grim. There’s an immortal emperor, Emperor Yamueto, who three-hundred years ago discovered the secret to immortality and has been using witches to breed scions and a family tree so complex it’d give M.C. Escher a headache trying to follow the lines.

The witches can also create and breathe life into monstrous creatures and basically have no free will of their own. The emperor is cruel, emotionless and controlling. Plenty of dark themes throughout the story involving control, captivity, and survival. Witches are tools more than people in this world, often dehumanised. Used mostly to breed more witches who can steal the life from anything living.

It’s a solid battle plan and one common to necromancers. If you can keep raising the dead, you have a virtually limitless supply of new recruits.

I thought the whole making trades with Death thing was interesting approach, but also fed into the OP nature of the ability. Given it could scale immensly depending on what you were willing to trade. I’d liked to have seen a little more of the scenes in this spirit world.

Pacing was a bit uneven overall. It starts slow, picks up momentum here and there, then dips again. Sort of like the story was fighting to find a consistent rhythm. I never got fully swept into the flow, and that’s probably the main reason it didn’t quite work for me the way I hoped it would. It does ratchet up toward the end with some higher-stakes action and emotional weight that kept me listening.

Narration by Lucy Walker-Evans was strong. She brought a good range of voices and kept things engaging even when the story dragged a little. I noticed a few really minor background noises scattered through the recording, but nothing major or distracting. Overall, it was a clean and well-voiced performance that suited the material well.

In the end, I’m glad I gave it a go. It’s got a solid self-contained story. While I liked it, I didn’t love it and I doubt it’s one I’ll revisit. Worth checking out if the premise grabs you, but for me, it was more a decent listen than a standout.

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