I gave Truthwitch by Susan Dennard a 4 out of 5 stars! This was book 14 of 2016!
This story is about two girls: Safiya and Iseult. This is a high fantasy story, and in this world there are invisible threads that connect individuals; these two are thread sisters, bonded together since childhood. (Think something similar to the Shadowhunter Parabatai, except its not exactly free choice in the same way.)
Safiya is a lord's neice and does not want to have any of the required power that comes with that. She was her own witchery of her own to deal with and hide from the powerful. Truthwitchery. When people speak to her she knows if a lies passes through their lips or if they speak the truth. Powerful people would kill to have someone like her at their ear, and to make matters more complcated, she's a "rare breed" so to speak in regards to her magic.
Unlike Safiya, Iseult is part of an ethnic group that is thoroughly disliked by most of the people in the countries we see throughout the story. Her fair skin and dark hair bring people to glare when they notice her. I appreciated that Susan Dennard tastefully brought in the concept of racism as we experience this fantastical world.
These two end up in the middle of what could possibly crumble the world's peace treaty into a war between countries and our story goes from there!
This is definitely a slower paced book. Since I'm in school and I work along with everything else, it ended up taking me exactly a month and one day to finish this story. Would I have finished it faster I had I not been so busy? Absolutely. But I found myself that I didn't want to pick this up and read a few pages here and there. I wanted to either read a big chunk or nothing, so I didn't pick it up as often as I would with any other book. THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT. But it is different than what I tend to read on a regular basis. It's the first book in a high fantasy series so we had to get lots of information about this world as well as the actual plot. I think Susan Dennard did a phenomenal job weaving those two necessities together. There were no big information dumps or anything like that.
I do have to say that not everything makes sense quite yet. We read a lot about this concept called cleaving in this story. Its one of the first scenes and its one of the last scenes as well as at least one in the middle of this book. But even though we read about what cleaving looks like, and our characters understand what it is and how it works and everything, I still am a little lost on how cleaving begins and what exactly it is. I know its definitely a bad thing and nobody wants it to happen to them! But that's basically all I got.
I'm also curious to know how magic and witchery is passed between generations. We know that not everyone is a witch but that they are rather common. And we know that there are different kinds of witchery and they are passed down genetically. But if your mother was a such and such witch does it mean you will be that same type of witch? How is it passed?
These questions are what knocked this story down a star. This could be due to this being just a first book, but I felt like I didn't have a complete grasp on the world I was reading about as I finished reading.
This is a Multiple POV story, and I seriously loved it! We get into the heads of some very different people in this story and I loved getting creeped out, angry, anxious, and exhilarated as we experienced different scenes from different people!
My favorite thing about Truthwitch was that our main relationship we get to see is Safiya's and Iseult's friendship. This is essential and at the focal point of the entire plot and I absolutely love that!
We do get a love interest but this particular subplot really takes a backseat to Safiya and Iseult's friendship. It was so refreshing to see this as its not something you get very often in Young Adult.
I also am a HUGE fan of the villain of this first book! He is definitely someone I am going to love to hate and half want to survive? SO MANY FEELINGS. I'm interested to see how that aspect pans out throughout the rest of this series! I definitely want to see more in regards to this particular character!
I don't want to go into any spoilers for this book, so I will leave you here.
Until next time,
MissSassyKassie
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