The main character is Simon Tregarth, an "outlander" who flees his own world.

He is a stranger to Estcarp and as such not really part of it. Instead, he becomes an observer who tries to fit into this new and different world. Repeatedly, he expresses his wish to understand—yet such alien aspects as their magic are difficult for him to accept. As a result, there is a curiously detached quality to him, and this detached quality carries over into the descriptions of Witch World. It is almost as if one, looking through Simon's eyes, sees the land and its people through a mist. Ironically, those seen most clearly are the Kolder, those terrible results of a scientific age gone wrong. Their world is close to the modern world of Simon, and he can appreciate as well as fear them, having seen in his own life the...