TRUTHWITCH (THE WITCHLANDS, BOOK 1) REVIEW

AUTHOR : Susan Dennard

PUBLISHED : 5 Janurary 2016

PAPERBACK : 496 Pages

SUMMARY : In a continent on the edge of war, two witches hold its fate in their hands.

Young witches Safiya and Iseult have a habit of finding trouble. After clashing with a powerful Guildmaster and his ruthless Bloodwitch bodyguard, the friends are forced to flee their home.

Safi must avoid capture at all costs as she's a rare Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lies. Many would kill for her magic, so Safi must keep it hidden - lest she be used in the struggle between empires. And Iseult's true powers are hidden even from herself.

In a chance encounter at Court, Safi meets Prince Merik and makes him a reluctant ally. However, his help may not slow down the Bloodwitch now hot on the girls' heels. All Safi and Iseult want is their freedom, but danger lies ahead. With war coming, treaties breaking and a magical contagion sweeping the land, the friends will have to fight emperors and mercenaries alike. For some will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch.

MY THOUGHTS :

I remember a lot of hype around this book when it came out and I've seen and heard feedback from people that range from loving it and enjoying it to tolerating it and hating it so just a kaleidoscope of emotions surrounding this book, not all of them positive. My thoughts about it, well I don't wanna be too critical about it so I'll range my feeling to "I thought the idea was cool but I got a few complaints"

When I first picked this book up I had high expectations from it, I mean a YA feminist-themed fantasy with kick-ass witches and a complex magical system, I really thought this was gonna be a great read but I should have known better than to trust Young Adults.

Anyways, this book is about a continent on the verge of war and our Protagonists Iseult and Safiya who like to get into trouble but not clash of kingdoms kind just the occasional highway robbery kind and try to avoid anything too dangerous but try as they might they end up smack dab in the middle of the power struggle between the kingdoms to get an upper hand on each other even before the 10 years truce is dissolved and the war breaks out all over again. A world brimming with super cool magic and kick-ass witches.

Now, this looks like a plot you could create a great epic with but unfortunately that doesn't happen and the characters that were supposed to drive the narrative become annoying and shallow over the course of the story. Shallow as in the writing was lacking, there was no depth to the characters, I mean of course the mean, cranky, Quick-tempered and hot, sea captain turns out to be a good guy who is just trying to do right by his people with a diabolical sister trying to foil his efforts to her own gain somehow. I mean, we all knew from the beginning that he was a good guy and was gonna turn out to be Safiya's love interest eventually, except 'eventually' happens much much sooner than I would've liked. During the course of three days with barely a few meaningful conversations between them a lot of palpable tension, not all of it sexual they somehow start to fall in love, I mean under three days! I've taken longer than that to find out a girl's name let alone fall in love, although this sentence may imply that I have no game I assure you it takes a lot longer than 3 days to fall in love with someone. (I think it's safe to say that there's no such thing as love at first sight, there's a reason ain't nobody falling for the ugly ones at first sight). I was literally screaming in my head that "it's only been 3 days!", I'd say that was the thing that mostly ruined the book for me.

Another thing that ruined my experience with this book was the lack of real and visceral violence that the arrival of the Bloodwitch Aeduan promised. I get that this is a Young Adult book and gotta be somehow PG adjacent, but man! A few times I thought that we were gonna get some real visceral action the book jumped to the scene after it had already all happened.

In terms of characters, The character of Safiya annoyed the hell out of me, made one stupid mistake after another despite her being portrayed as not just educated smart but street smart too. Her mistakes got people in trouble especially poor Iseult, and then her character tried to redeem herself trying to make me believe her to be some kind of tragic martyr. Her Truthwitchery which is supposed to be super rare and somehow makes her an integral part of the coming war which I'm gonna admit I didn't get.

I mean it is a cool power to have to interrogate someone and root out the spies and culprits but at some point, the opposition is gonna employ some other tactic that can't be foiled with mere truthwitchery, there's got to be something more to it than that which hopefully surfaces in the next book that I'm reluctant to read but am going to.

To be honest the only saving grace for this book is its magical system and to some extent the character of Iseult. Iseult to me seemed more realistic, complex, and flawed in ways I could relate to, with her supercool threadwitch powers and maybe something more her character is much more interesting than that of 'Boo-Hoo I'm poor unfortunate princess' Safiya. Safiya's got people killing and dying to protect her including Iseult, the only saving grace for Safi's character is her friendship with Iseult. The characters unrelated to Safiya like Gretchya, Alma, Kullen, Evrane I really liked and 'Night angel wannabe' Aeduan, to be honest, I expected more from his character.

Overall this was not as thrilling a read as I expected it to be but still has a lot of promise so I'm gonna stick with it for now and pick up the second book. I'd recommend this book to the ones who are into instalove romance fantasy and immune to negative reviews of the book, I know I've enjoyed a few books with not so good reviews.

CHARACTERS :

1- SAFIYA FON HASSTREL

Maddie Hasson.