Ok so, this is actually the second time I’ve read Truthwitch. I read it and Windwitch, the second book in the series, last fall when I last did a big online book order to get myself some English books. I enjoyed them enough (and wanted to know how the series ends enough) that when I ordered some more books a couple weeks ago I also ordered Bloodwitch, the freshly released third book in the series, so I’m rereading the first two books to refresh my memory. I’ll try to keep my knowledge of what happens in the second book out of this review as much as possible but can make no promises. I’ll do a review of Windwitch after I reread it as well.
Let’s start with some good and some bad. On the good side, I think that Susan Dennard has built a really interesting magical world for her Witchland novels. I am thoroughly intrigued by the mythology behind the Origin Wells, Great War, and the Twenty-Year Truce. The Origin Wells being the best part of the world building behind this novel. To give a brief summary there are five Origin Wells (arguably six, if you believe in the Void Well, which *spoiler* you one hundred percent should unless every clue in the novel is being intentionally crafted to woefully mislead us). There are wells for each of the four elements, water, wind, earth, and fire, plus aether, which seems to cover all the magic that doesn’t neatly fall into the other categories. Every witches magic in the Witchlands is drawn from/associated with one of the wells. For example, you can have water magic, wind magic, word magic (that ones from the aether well), etc. Then within each category of magic there are subsets, like air witches versus wind witches, and tide witches versus water witches, word witches, thread witches, fire witches, poison witches etc. So, for example, one witch associated with air might only be able to control winds, whereas another can control all aspects of air including creating storms, controlling air temperature, etc.
Some of the most interesting and compelling parts of the novel for me where when we got glimpses of how the day to day life of this world functions with magic like this in it. For example the tide witch and wind witch sailors who sing their songs and sail their ships to the rhythm of a giant drum, the word witches who use their powers to collect information and gossip to sell for the highest price, or the thread witches, who can see the way peoples lives and feelings weave together and connect the world. All of that has so much potential, and we get glimpses of it, but I don’t think that Susan Dennard fully explores and takes advantage of all the fascinating aspects of her magical world as much as she could have.
Alright, I know it’s not fair to compare every book with magical world building to Harry Potter because 1. that’s an absurdly high standard of measure, and 2. I’m unabashedly biased towards Harry Potter because of how much the series influenced my love of reading. But I’m going to do the comparison anyway for practical reasons (sort of). Anyway, obviously Harry Potter has amazing characters and plot to go along with the incredible world building throughout the series, but one of the things that I think really sets Harry Potter apart in the realm of magical fantasy novels is the way it mixes the totally fantastical, mesmerizing, and unbelievable elements of magic with the otherwise mundane and trivial parts of life in the books. Like how Molly Weasley uses magic to prepare the potatoes for dinner because of course that’s what you do in a world of magic, and naturally school children should learn how to handle potentially deadly creatures because that’s just another day in the life of a witch or wizard. What I’m trying to say is that all these crazy and amazing things are mixed so seamlessly into what we otherwise recognize as normal life that it makes the magical elements seem more fantastical but so real and tangible at the same time. I think Susan Dennard’s magical world has that potential but, unfortunately, she leaves it mostly untapped but for a mention here or there. In Truthwitch magic is reserved mostly for what you expect magic to be used for: epic fights, power struggles, and ancient prophecies.
And now let’s get into some of my more serious/particular issues with the magic in this series. A lot of my concrete issues are associated with specific characters though so lets go into them a little bit first. There are two main characters, Safiya and Iseult. Safiya is an incredibly rare Truthwitch, able to sense truth from lie, and even tell a person’s true intentions/trustworthiness simply by looking at them. And she’s in hiding because kings and kingdoms have been known to kill and be killed in quest of that kind of power. And then there’s Iseult who is a Midenzi. The Midenzi being a nomadic people that seem loosely based off of a kind of gypsy culture. In any case, Midenzi people, easily identified by their hair and skin tone, are hated by the rest of the inhabitants of the Witchlands (if I recall correctly the reason isn’t gone into in this book but might be in the second book, I can’t quite remember). Iseult is also a Threadwitch able to see the weave of the world that connects people together and the colorful threads that display peoples emotions before her very eyes, but she’s defective because she can’t create the magical Threadstones that any true Threadwitch should be able to make. Aside from those two characters we get chapters from the perspectives of two other characters. Merick Nihar the prince/admiral of a small, starving nation and a Windwitch, and Aeduan, a monk of the Carawen order and a powerful Bloodwitch (a type of power that comes from void magic and therefore supports the existence of the void well).
I have issues with each of these characters and the way their magic functions. I’ll try to be brief about it, but let’s be real, this is me and succinct I am not. Safiya aka Safi. She has the power to tell truth from lie, but when and how this power works seems inconsistent. Like I get that she ignores her power a lot of the time out of reflex but there are times when it really seems like she should have been paying attention to it but doesn’t and other times when it’s doing its thing but seems pretty unnecessary. Then there’s the whole thing where it’s just straight up wrong sometimes because it can only tell whether the person speaking believes that they’re telling the truth or not. Now that, in and of itself, isn’t an issue for me. In fact, I’d say that’s pretty typical of truth magic across the fantasy genre. But during the book Safi is surprised to find that things she thought were true actually aren’t. Like the history she learned in school. Why didn’t she know it was false when she read her text books? (yes this is somewhat relevant to the plot) Well, this is explained away with the idea that Safi is only now coming to realize the limitations of her power and learning to second guess herself and her instincts. Which is all well and good, I just have a little bit of a hard time believing that in the entire seventeen years of her life no one was ever like, “oh, by the way, it’s going to rain today so take an umbrella,” (or something like that), and her magic was like, “oh, yup, that’s true,” so she hauled an umbrella around all day only to never use it. This is a really mundane example, but I just have a hard time believing that no situation ever occurred in the entire course of her life before the novel takes place to make her realize this particular limitation on her magic. But this is a relatively small issue and I’m willing to let it go.
But Iseult’s magic, or rather the whole mythology around Threadwitches and thread magic, here I have a real issue. As a Threadwitch Iseult can see the threads of everyone around her but not her own, and not the threads of any other Threadwitch. Nor can any other Threadwitch see hers. We learn that in Iseult’s tribe Threadwitches can’t marry because under their law only “Heartthreads” can marry (Heartthreads are never explicitly explained but as far as I can tell it’s two people connected by a thread of true love). Since Threadwitches’ threads can’t be seen they can’t have Heartthreads and therefore can’t marry. Now here’s my first issue because we are only told that Threadwitches’ threads can’t be seen not that they don’t exist so in theory shouldn’t they be able to have Heartthreads and they just aren’t visible? Or do they actually not have threads and it just wasn’t clear in the novel? But here’s my BIG issue. In either case, this seemingly minor plot point that Susan Dennard adds completely breaks down one of the fundamental elements of the story. Iseult and Safiya are Threadsisters, connected when Iseult saved Safi’s life as children. And your thread family, as we are told, is your true family, which creates the powerful and extremely important bond between our two main characters. But hold on, because if a Threadwitches magic prevents her from having a Heartthread shouldn’t it preclude the possibility of having other kinds of Threadfamily too? In fact, two characters, Iseult being one of them, even have a conversation about whether or not they believe that Threadwatches actually have Threadfamilies that just can’t be seen or whether they truly don’t have any. Which makes no sense because Safi and Iseult are considered Threadsisters by themselves and everyone around them. No one questions the connection and you might argue that it’s because the girls are so close that no one who knows them would challenge their relationship, but they meet a lot of new people throughout the novel and no one questions it. Ever. Not even when Safi talks to someone about the event that created the Threadsister bond. Maybe I’m missing something but to me this reads like a glaring inconsistency in the magical fabric of Dennard’s world and it’s related to something so important to her main characters and central plot that I have no idea how it could have made its way into the novel.
Aaaand now Merik. One of the first things we learn about Merik is that he is a Windwitch, but a very weak one. Barely strong enough to be considered a Windwitch at all we’re told. This is central to Merik’s background, and seems to have a lot of bearing on his self image and family relations and is brought up repeatedly throughout the story. But I literally never see evidence of it. No matter what situation occurs Merik’s wind magic seems just exactly powerful enough to get him through it. I mean I’m not saying that he can solve every problem because of how powerful his magic is, but it seems to me that if his magic is truly that weak there needs to be a reason. Like it fails him when he needs it most, or he can’t complete the same tasks as another wind witch would be able to. But this. never. happens. There’s a lot of, “He felt his power weakening,” and, “he used every ounce of his power,” type of phrases that make it clear he’s putting in a lot of effort, but for all the talk of his power running out it never does and for all the times he has to dig into the deepest part of his being to muster up enough magic to do what he needs to do there is never a time that his magic simply isn’t enough no matter how hard he tries. And like ok, we all love a hero who pushes themselves above and beyond what they think they can do to achieve the impossible. But every single time? Merik’s power or lack there of is important in his background but that’s it. To me it reads exactly like a plot device to have forced Merik into becoming the man that he is. And don’t get me wrong, that’s totally fine in theory, his background should affect who he is now, but if you’re going to make something like that a part of the character’s past it needs to be part of the present as well. As it is I just cringe every time Merik uses his power because of the glaring inconsistency between what we’re told his power is and the way it actually functions in the novel.
Ok, that was a lot about the characters and their magic (not even going to get into Aeduan and his blood magic right now, it has fewer issues anyway), but honestly most of the issues I have with Truthwitch can be summed up by my issues with the characters and their powers. I mean like, yeah, the plot and characters themselves are somewhat flat and unoriginal but they certainly fit squarely into the YA fantasy genre, which makes them less interesting than they could have been but not terrible. Honestly I’ve come to expect it from most YA fantasy (which doesn’t mean that I don’t still enjoy reading YA fantasy, I mean I like the genre for a reason and it just means that every once in a while I get pleasantly surprised by characters that are truly amazing). The real problem with Truthwitch and the Witchland series is that Susan Dennard has created this intriguing magical system but doesn’t seem to fully understand it herself. It’s like she made it up as she went along changing her mind here and there about how the magic was going to work or what each character was going to be able to do with it based on what her plot needed. Sure this helps the plot along and allows her to get her characters in and out of interesting situations, but ultimately the novel suffers for it. I think we would have a lot more genuine characters and an even more interesting plot if Dennard had allowed her characters and world to interact fully rather than manipulating each in turn to force things into the shape she wanted.
Final decision, 3/5 stars. I enjoyed my first read through of Truthwitch but the second time it was kind of hard to get through because I didn’t have any of that excitement over discovering the plot to distract me from the problems in the story. Plus, character’s like Safiya and Iseult were well enough the first time around, but they’re to flat and stereotypical to be able to really make me care about or feel invested in them. I feel like most of my YA reviews end this way, but once again I’d say that this is a fun read if you like magic, fantasy, and adventure (with a hint of romance), but it’s nothing to write home about.
Mad Random 