Witch of the Four Winds
1963 novel by John Jakes
Witch of the Four Winds is a fantasy novel by American writer John Jakes, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Brak the Barbarian.
Publication history
The story was first published in the magazine Fantastic Stories of Imagination as a two-part serial in the issues for November and December 1963. It was first published in book form in paperback by Paperback Library in April 1969, with the title changed to Brak the Barbarian Versus the Sorceress. It was reprinted by Pocket Books in November 1977, and by Tower Books (under the shortened title Brak vs. The Sorceress) in 1981. British editions were issued under the title The Sorceress by Tandem in July 1970 (reprinted in 1976) and Star/W. H. Allen in February 1988. It was later, with the original title restored, gathered together with When the Idols Walked and two stories from The Fortunes of Brak into the omnibus collection Witch of the Four Winds / When the Idols Walked, published as an ebook by Open Road Integrated Media in July 2012. The novel has been translated into German
Plot summary
Brak, a blond, braided, and broadsword-wielding barbarian from the frozen north, continues his quest to reach the glorious southern realm of Khurdisan the Golden. In a desolate country, he encounters malevolent magic. Boulders fall in a soundless rain, and a mysterious old stranger appears to know all about him.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Witch of the Four Winds” is 1963 novel by John Jakes. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Witch, Four and Winds, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1963 novel by John Jakes” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18210212. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1969, 1977 and 1981.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Witch of the Four Winds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.