Book Review: Truthwitch

Author: Susan Dennard

Publisher: Tor Teen

Genre: YA Fantasy

My Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis:

“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”

If this book hadn’t been so painfully slow to start with I truly don’t think I would have ever finished it. I already tried reading Truthwitch once forever ago and I couldn’t get into it,  but this time I decided to force myself through and oh. my. gosh. it’s so worth it! If the beginning hadn’t taken forever and wasn’t painfully confusing this would be a perfect five star read. It took me over 200 pages to finally get past confusing info dumps before I actually cared for the characters or plot. After that turning point this book was became nothing short of magical.

The biggest problem this book is it’s pacing. It’s a hot mess that almost made me give up on the series for good. The first 200+ pages drag except for short fight scenes tangled into a mess confusing world politics that weren’t well explained. At times, specifically the beginning, the dull pace made the story difficult to enjoy or focus on. I ended up reading another book just to avoid picking this one up after I was just 50 pages in. The world building during this portion of the book was written weirdly too. It wasn’t explained well and I struggled to grasp an understanding of it. There were a lot of fantasy terms tossed around without explanation that STILL confuse me. Some of the powers never get explanations and there are still a million things that didn’t get fleshed out.

It took me a while to like the characters too. In the oh so painful beginning they felt like the same people and I could hardly tell them apart during some of the opening chapters. Neither of them got development until that latter half of the book and it made it harder to read until finally FINALLY they got their own human flaws that helped them feel more realistic. When all of that started falling into place I actually felt some connection to the characters and their girl power friendship but getting to that point took forever which sucked. Every good thing in this book takes ages to get to.

Once everything really did get going I LOVED the story. The action scenes were well written and I loved all the teased storylines for the future book. I need more Iseult and Aeudan stories as soon as freaking possible! The best parts of this book are the little things that promise more, and they’re the only reasons I’ll probably be continuing on with this series. This concept has a lot of promise and I think I could actually enjoy the rest of the story (as long as the beginning isn’t paced weird in those books too).

Random other things I liked in the story:
– the concept of Threads

-Cleaved

– Merik and Safi’s hate-to-love romance

-Fight scenes

-Aeudan’s mysterious backstory

-All of Iseult and Aeudan’s intercations

–mhe verujta

I’m really keeping my fingers crossed that this story will continue to improve as the story progresses, because although this beginning was a little shaky it is definitely promising.