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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Re read!
This is just so excellent. Even better second time around
This is just so excellent. Even better second time around
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was such a solid continuation of the Witchlands series and gave a lot of useful backstory that answers a fair few questions. Like the other books in the series, I love the Dragon Age-esque vibe of the book, and this was made even stronger in this volume because of the extra information (such as images, constellations and notes) which provide more background information, like codex entries! It's made me really excited to dive into Bloodwitch!
Not my favorite. I tend to struggle with diary-style stories because I rarely feel like a person would actually write things down the way we read them now, and Sightwitch definitely suffered for it. Neither of the narrators felt like real people to me. Part of this was probably the sheer amount of exposition they needed to shoulder.
Sightwitch is basically a classic dungeon crawl, with the main story-line being Ryber's descent into mysterious caverns. I don't mind stories like that, but in the scope of a novella, there just wasn't enough to do on every step of the journey to justify how many there were. Not a lot happens at every stage and yet in order for it to feel like a challenge, there have to be quite a lot of them.
Overall it just felt like this book was trying to do too much while actually doing too little. There's a lot of ground covered by characters who don't have enough space to interact with anything, including each other, to become interesting. Going into Sightwitch we already know there is a romance between Kullen and Ryber and yet I couldn't care less about them because there is so little chemistry - and in the grander scheme of things, they only spend a couple pages of book and a couple hours of time together, really.
The lore that's revealed here feels pretty significant to the main books so I do feel like this was a necessary read going into Bloodwitch, but it just doesn't hold up by itself.
Sightwitch is basically a classic dungeon crawl, with the main story-line being Ryber's descent into mysterious caverns. I don't mind stories like that, but in the scope of a novella, there just wasn't enough to do on every step of the journey to justify how many there were. Not a lot happens at every stage and yet in order for it to feel like a challenge, there have to be quite a lot of them.
Overall it just felt like this book was trying to do too much while actually doing too little. There's a lot of ground covered by characters who don't have enough space to interact with anything, including each other, to become interesting. Going into Sightwitch we already know there is a romance between Kullen and Ryber and yet I couldn't care less about them because there is so little chemistry - and in the grander scheme of things, they only spend a couple pages of book and a couple hours of time together, really.
The lore that's revealed here feels pretty significant to the main books so I do feel like this was a necessary read going into Bloodwitch, but it just doesn't hold up by itself.
I really liked this book and I think that the reason I didn't just inhale the story is because I love this world and I didn't want to not have a new story to read. I am really hoping that she makes a mother book that continues on these characters stories.
This was definitely a pleasant surprise! I really enjoy the Witchlands series, but I wasn’t expecting much out of this little novella. That being said, it proved to be very fast paced and helped set up events for Bloodwitch, the third book. If you’re wondering if you have to read this, I would say most likely, because it definitely expands the world and brings up some questions that will most likely be answered in further installments.
Very grounded in its politics with a protagonist who is not stupid and does not make the same stupid mistakes another YA protagonist would've made in the name of "love", "friendship", "freedom", "liberty" and other such things.
2021 thoughts:
After finishing my first reread of Sightwitch, I raised my rating from 3 stars to 4. There's SO much happening in such a short book that I am truly baffled by the fact I was bored the first time through. Though Sightwitch is sort of an in-between book in The Witchlands series, it is an absolute must-read to get a sense of where the story heads in Bloodwitch and beyond.
2018 review:
I loved the previous two Witchlands books but Sightwitch missed the mark for me.
This falls prey to one of my number one book pet peeves. Plot points mentioned on the book jacket aren't introduced until halfway through the story. And why is that? Because the first half of the book is so, so slow.
Sightwitch is filled with Witchlands lore -- and don't get me wrong the lore is really well done -- it just needed a little more story for my taste. There's a lot of confusing discussions about Witchlands history that aren't really resolved by the end of the book. Maybe some of that's on me since I remember basically nothing from Truthwitch and Windwitch but I found it frustrating that a whole plot line is based around cryptic events.
I still love this series and am anxiously awaiting Bloodwitch, I just found this to be not quite the same quality level as the rest of the series.
After finishing my first reread of Sightwitch, I raised my rating from 3 stars to 4. There's SO much happening in such a short book that I am truly baffled by the fact I was bored the first time through. Though Sightwitch is sort of an in-between book in The Witchlands series, it is an absolute must-read to get a sense of where the story heads in Bloodwitch and beyond.
2018 review:
I loved the previous two Witchlands books but Sightwitch missed the mark for me.
This falls prey to one of my number one book pet peeves. Plot points mentioned on the book jacket aren't introduced until halfway through the story. And why is that? Because the first half of the book is so, so slow.
Sightwitch is filled with Witchlands lore -- and don't get me wrong the lore is really well done -- it just needed a little more story for my taste. There's a lot of confusing discussions about Witchlands history that aren't really resolved by the end of the book. Maybe some of that's on me since I remember basically nothing from Truthwitch and Windwitch but I found it frustrating that a whole plot line is based around cryptic events.
I still love this series and am anxiously awaiting Bloodwitch, I just found this to be not quite the same quality level as the rest of the series.