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C. S. Wachter lives in rural Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, with her husband Joe, one German Shepherd, and three cats. She and Joe have been married for more than forty years and have three sons, one grandson and one granddaughter.
Ms. Wachter earned her degree in Performing Arts and English Education from Rowan University in 1975. She compares developing a character’s perspective to preparing for an acting role. As a life-long lover of books, she has read and enjoyed a variety of genres. However, after reading J. R. R. Tolkien in middle school her favorite has been, and remains to this day, Fantasy with a Christian perspective.
Reviewed by Kim Anisi for Readers' Favorite
Rayne, the protagonist of The Sorcerer's Bane by C.S. Wachter, was supposed to grow up surrounded by everything he needed to become the next king of Ochen. According to a prophecy, he was also meant to be a Lightbringer to spread the message of the one god. All the plans for his future are destroyed when he is kidnapped by his father’s enemy, the sorcerer Sigmund. He implants a device in the six-year-old boy to erase his memory, plant false memories and also keep him from speaking. Sigmund wants to turn the young prince into an assassin within ten years – with the end goal of having him assassinate his own parents on his 16th birthday. The sorcerer wants to bring darkness to all the worlds, and erasing the royal family is his first step. What he did not know was that the One had already planted his own seed in the young boy’s soul. While Rayne is put into a world of pain, abuse, bullying and killing, there always seems to be some hope in him. But will that light be strong enough to stop the sorcerer’s plan?
It is obvious where the Christian influence is in this story (with the One god), but there is nothing at all in the book that makes you feel excluded or looked down upon if you’re not a Christian, so that’s one very big plus. I enjoyed that the book was fairly long, considering it’s the first in a series. You have enough time to get to know the characters and build a connection to them (some positive ones, some negative ones). It is a classic story of light versus dark, but packaged in a creative plot with interesting developments; some of them will delight readers, some will devastate them. I found the idea of the connected worlds quite interesting, and hope it’s something that will play a bigger role in future parts of the series. It’ll also be interesting to see how Rayne develops into a man, and whether he will be able to overcome the remaining darkness within him.
