A Witch among Wolves: Fantastical Stories by Rebecca Buchanan features twenty tales of magical realism, urban fantasy, and pagan-inflected fiction. The collection was previously published in 2015, but this updated anthology includes stories from The Serpent and the Throat (2016) as well as previously uncollected tales. Taken together, this collection of stories presents a variety of work that showcases Buchanan’s versatility as an author and great skill as a stylist and storyteller.
The subjects of the tales range from space colonists seeking habitation in the wake of a scorched Earth to a young woman bearing her father’s bones across savannah and desert on a rite of passage, from an underground expedition to extract the remains of an ancient dragon to a covert operative in the dystopian People’s Republic of Alaska, from a Dionysian dream vision involving black leopards to a mild-mannered funeral director who encounters Death dressed in the garb of a “green man,” and from a kind of medieval tarot reader to a witch who makes a deal with wolves on a magical quest to cure an ailing friend. There is also a polytheist version of the tale of the headless horseman, a Marine drill sergeant’s encounter with a mermaid, a young girl’s appeal to a dying coyote to carry a prayer to Hekate, a gothic tale with a dying god and a vampire—and two or three tales of sci-fi fantasy that echo very strongly of Ursula LeGuin.
Throughout these stories, pagan elements interweave seamlessly with the plot in such a way that any lack of familiarity with the gods and goddesses, say, of the Canaanite or Egyptian pantheon is not a hindrance to following the narrative. The prose is clear, descriptive, quite poetic at times, and Buchanan has a keen sense of mood and setting and an artful command of plot from start to finish.
The title story appears last in this collection, and “A Witch among Wolves” rewards the reader with a fantastically original story that draws on Latvian and Lithuanian mythology to showcase the narrator’s powers of spellcraft and shamanic healing. For the narrator, Audra, is, after all, a witch, but her powers are called upon specifically to find a cure for a dear friend’s husband who is sick and dying. Audra is reluctant to do so, as it requires calling upon great and dangerous powers, but naturally she is persuaded to put on her witch’s hat, as it were, and the spellcraft that follows is a true showcase of the author’s knowledge of pagan lore, herbology, jewelry-making, and tactics for negotiating with forest wolves and water spirits. Latvian and Lithuanian folklore tends not to be as well-known as, say, that of the Greeks or even the Egyptians or the Norse, but the curious reader will find that Velnias, the Horned God of the Lithuanians, and Gabija, spirit of the fire and protector of the home, are actual figures in the Lithuanian pantheon. And ragana is in fact the Lithuanian word for witch, as the narrator explains:
“The Italian strega had Aradia and Diana, and the Greek pharmakeia had Circe and Hekate; but the Lithuanian ragana had learned their magic from Velnias, the Horned God of the Underworld himself.” (224)
And a variant spelling of Velnias, Veles or Welnes, apparently has been theorized to be connected with a Slavic deity that takes on the form of a wolf. All very fascinating, and philological details that can only enrich the reader’s understanding of this masterfully crafted story.
A Witch among Wolves: Fantastical Stories by Rebecca Buchanan will appeal to pagan readers especially but it also should prove enjoyable to readers of urban fantasy, magical realism, sci fi and fantasy—and I especially would love to see what the author could do with a more sustained work of either sci fi or fantasy. My special request would be one day to see the expanded tales of Loegria.
Highly recommended.
~review by Christopher Greiner
Author: Rebecca Buchanan
Rebecca Buchanan, 2025
260 pg. Paperback $14.99 / ebook $2.99
