Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham is a fantasy novel set in the Pathfinder world of Golarion. The beginning of the book starts with a pseudo-viking village being attacked by minions of of the winter witches. They are looking for a child who is born with magical abilities. We get a nice action-packed battle scene. The book fast-forwards fifteen years as the sister of the magical child has traveled south on a mission to secure her rescue.
Winter Witch reads like a fun role-playing campaign. The main characters join a caravan and trek to the frozen north to the city of the winter witches. There are lots of standard fantasy tropes with interesting twists on them. There is a magic school originally built for gnomes, marauding nomad warriors for the characters to fight on their trek, and the titular winter witches. My favorite part of the book is how one of the characters uses drawing and art to cast magic. This book is a quick read full of fights, magic, and spellbinding places. I recommend it to fans of fantasy and Pathfinder.
Gaming Inspiration:
If you are a Pathfinder fan then this book will give you background information the cities of Korvosa and Whitethrone as well as the winter witches themselves. If you are not a Pathfinder player this book is still full of useful items for a fantasy game. You can use the characters as NPCs and use the locales in your own campaign. I would steal the art magic that one of the main characters uses for my game. I give this book 2 natural 20s.
