Sam and Dean Winchester are not your average pair of brothers. Since losing their mother to a demonic attack twenty-two years ago, their father has schooled them in the ways of demons, and how they inhabit the back roads of America, as well teaching them how to fight and kill evil. Now, the brother travel in their father’s old Impala taking a stand between the human world and that of the supernatural...

Supernatural: Witch’s Canyon is the second book from the new series of Supernatural television tie-in novels. The author second out of the traps is Jeff Mariotte, who has written for comics as well as a large number of similar books for other shows, predominantly those set in the Buffy universe, so great things were expected here.

Mariotte moves the boys out of the big city back into their usual environment of small town America to tell the tale of a town which every forty years is visited by a sting of murders. The boys arrive the day before the next cycle is set to begin. The numbers of murders have normally been small, as the town itself held few people, but now a mega-mall is set to be completed offering up an enormous increase in the number of victims.

Placing the boys back in their natural environment is less risky and more likely to please existing fans than Keith R.A. DeCandido’s book Nevermore, which placed them in a large city. On the one hand it makes the book feel very much a part of the show, however it also looses the chance to mix things up a bit and try something new with the characters. It's a safe choice, and to honest this is what the whole book feels like - safe.

It’s not that it isn’t written well enough; lord knows Mariotte has had enough practice prior to penning this one, it's just that it doesn’t really take many chances. This has spilled over to his take on Sam and Dean who have lost a lot of the brotherly humour displayed in the previous novel.

This generic approach to the story and characters will be a pleasure for fans of the show due to its lack of challenge, though I’m not convinced that the casual reader will enjoy it as much.

7

Charles Packer