Truthwitch by Susan Dennard | Book Review #93

“On a continent ruled by three empires, some are born with a “witchery,” a magical skill that sets them apart from others.

In the Witchlands, there are almost as many types of magic as there are ways to get in trouble—as two desperate young women know all too well.

Safiya is a Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lie. It’s a powerful magic that many would kill to have on their side, especially amongst the nobility to which Safi was born. So Safi must keep her gift hidden, lest she be used as a pawn in the struggle between empires.

Iseult, a Threadwitch, can see the invisible ties that bind and entangle the lives around her—but she cannot see the bonds that touch her own heart. Her unlikely friendship with Safi has taken her from life as an outcast into one of reckless adventure, where she is a cool, wary balance to Safi’s hotheaded impulsiveness.

Safi and Iseult just want to be free to live their own lives, but war is coming to the Witchlands. With the help of the cunning Prince Merik (a Windwitch and ship’s captain) and the hindrance of a Bloodwitch bent on revenge, the friends must fight emperors, princes, and mercenaries alike, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch.”

Wow, what a whirlwind this book was. Right off the bat there’s some great action, and from that point on, the action doesn’t stop. There’ll be lulls, but then the action will just soar back up to being non-stop again.

There are multiple point’s of view, and there’s no distinction of who’s who when the view changes characters. What I mean is, there’s no “Safiya” at the top of her points of view, and honestly, I was so confused for a good portion of the book because of that. In the first actual few pages of the book I couldn’t decipher who was who. It’s safe to say that for the first few pages, chapters, I thought the girls were one in the same, even though I knew they were two different characters. After a while though, I got the hang of the girls’ differing views and then it was easy to tell who was who. Kind of like identical twins, except they look nothing alike. I make that analogy because their views are seriously so similar.

There’s no love triangle! There’s a lot of love going around, but there’s no love-triangle. And no one sleeps with anyone (yet). These characters; for better or worse, really care about each other.

There is A LOT of sass, everywhere in this book. The book is like, filled with sass. You open the page and wham, you get slapped with some sass. I’m not complaining though. The sass made everything livable despite the serious conditions. The girls’ personalities really complete each others.

There’re these characters, right, and there’s so much ANGST & LUST between the two of them. For your information, I’m not talking about Isuelt and Safiya. I’m talking about one of the girls with this guy and their personalities really bounce off their counterpart’s.

And am I the only one who picked up on the attraction has that someone has for that guy who goes red??? AM I?! I think that these two would be perfect for each other, and I don’t think I am the only one who thinks that!! When these two threatened one another, while their threats were serious, they were also pretty harmless at the same time.

So many twists and turns that I didn’t think would happen! But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t predict anything. I couldn’t — at all. And let me tell you how refreshing that is. To be able to sit down and read a book and to be able not to tell what’s going to happen in 50 to 100 pages later (or more pages than that) is awesome. It’s like I could sit back and relax, and enjoy this book!

The creativity behind this story is awesome. Now that I’m comparing Truthwitch to other books, I can see where there are some similarities that lie in, but other than that Truthwitch is pretty unique to it’s own story! And the writing; I’ve said that Truthwith is pretty go-go-go all the time. After I finished reading Truthwitch and analyzed it, I realized that this is the (second book) first book of hers that I’ve read that’s pretty action-packed.