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A review by betharanova
Windwitch by Susan Dennard
1.0
She beefed it, lads!
Book one was flawed but kept me hooked with attachment to certain characters. In this book, Dennard either forgot those characters existed or heaped insult after insult upon them. My rage cannot be contained. I loved my faves and I had faith in her as a writer, and for this I was punished with this grievous indignity.
First, writing and plot. Only one protagonist accomplished anything in this book, and it was at the very end. The rest of the time was spent dithering around to no particular effect. My guess is that this was meant to be a book of character development rather than real events. I’ll get to that later. Plot-wise, nothing happened. The writing remained at the same quality style-wise, but it got worse as far as factual consistency. There were certainly some retroactive changes, and multiple things that were brought up for the first time as if the reader had already heard of them.
Safi, whom I already disliked, became bearable only in the few instances she actively decided to think about her decisions before she made them. Otherwise, she got worse. She admitted plainly in the narrative that her friendship with Iseult was unbalanced and she caused Iseult to suffer—and then she promptly shifted that blame to someone else. Her storyline introduced some very intriguing characters in the Hell-Bards that captured her. However, because the narrative feels the need to give Safi her way, they were de-clawed by the end of the book.
Iseult meandered the entire time. She teamed up with Aeduan with fairly little fuss, and they walked for their portion of the book. Where Safi occasionally channeled Iseult and became halfway tolerable, Iseult occasionally channeled Safi and became an utter idiot. This was largely in the interest of forcing Aeduan to rescue her. Everything about their budding romance was forced and felt out of character for both of them, not least because neither of their viewpoints delved into why they might have any interest in one another. Like before, Aeduan’s viewpoint delved into absolutely nothing. Too often, he narrated that he was doing his own actions “for some reason.” Boy, if you don’t know, then I sure don’t, either.
I will grant you that Iseult’s character journey went somewhere interesting! There were two brief and delicious scenes with the Puppeteer, and consequences came of that. We simply were not allowed to examine it in any detail; the book was then over.
Vivia’s viewpoint was introduced. In book one, she was Merik’s older sister, the ambitious heir to the throne who was arranging piratical ventures to get resources. She was delightfully vicious. But her POV grants a different angle: she’s secretly nice, and only acts nasty for her father’s approval and her people’s respect. She even pushes away the first mate she’s in love with (a powerful witch with a mild disability; this could have been Merik/Kullen in book one if Dennard weren’t a coward) to maintain the act. She’s afraid of being hated and shunned if she’s… nicer. Girl, what. The narrative bounds back and forth between her act and her true feelings in a desperate bid to justify all her actions and frame her as the true and rightful queen who was doing it correctly all along. You know, by tearing up the legal trading contracts and risking war on her already war-torn country.
The worst crime of all was upon Merik. I genuinely do not know where his character arc in this book came from. Like Iseult, Merik dithered around and didn’t accomplish much. He spent the book mostly being taught lessons to improve flaws he didn’t have in book one. In this sequel, Merik is forced to admit he was wrong all along: there was never any hope for trading contracts (despite the fact he got two); he shouldn’t have been obsessed with getting the throne (he wasn’t); and he shouldn’t have assumed that the navy needed him and he could rule better than Vivia (who was risking three empires’ wrath by stealing weapons and provisions). He also suffers the constant realization that he doesn’t know his capital city and never understood how his people were suffering (despite the fact that his entire motivation in the first book is how his people are starving). Merik’s self-reflection made me feel insane. I just read book one the other week, and I had no idea what these accusations were talking about.
The most uncomfortable part involved Cam, a young trans man. Cam is only present in Merik’s POV. Merik thinks that Cam is a girl who is disguised as a boy for reasons that aren’t his business. There is no other mention of trans people in the books so far. Yet when Merik calls Cam a girl, both Cam and the narrative drag him for making assumptions and being a terrible person. I’d agree if I thought Merik had any concept of people being trans. As it stands, even I couldn’t tell whether Cam was a trans man or Merik was correct until the aforementioned confrontation. This was in part because the narration refers to him as ‘she’ for all but one page of the book. It’s real uncomfortable and not how I would recommend having a trans character, especially if you’re just going to use them as a gotcha.
I truly don’t think Dennard had a plan for this one. Most characters were given nothing to do. I actually don’t believe a single character in this book was gainfully employed. Alarming flaws were retroactively made up for Merik for the sake of conflict—possibly for the sake of Vivia looking good. The romance was blandly forced at every turn, and all those turns were bad and weird. The place book two ended was not especially different from the place book one ended, except that everyone I love has been disrespected.
It is on SIGHT, Dennard.
Book one was flawed but kept me hooked with attachment to certain characters. In this book, Dennard either forgot those characters existed or heaped insult after insult upon them. My rage cannot be contained. I loved my faves and I had faith in her as a writer, and for this I was punished with this grievous indignity.
First, writing and plot. Only one protagonist accomplished anything in this book, and it was at the very end. The rest of the time was spent dithering around to no particular effect. My guess is that this was meant to be a book of character development rather than real events. I’ll get to that later. Plot-wise, nothing happened. The writing remained at the same quality style-wise, but it got worse as far as factual consistency. There were certainly some retroactive changes, and multiple things that were brought up for the first time as if the reader had already heard of them.
Safi, whom I already disliked, became bearable only in the few instances she actively decided to think about her decisions before she made them. Otherwise, she got worse. She admitted plainly in the narrative that her friendship with Iseult was unbalanced and she caused Iseult to suffer—and then she promptly shifted that blame to someone else. Her storyline introduced some very intriguing characters in the Hell-Bards that captured her. However, because the narrative feels the need to give Safi her way, they were de-clawed by the end of the book.
Iseult meandered the entire time. She teamed up with Aeduan with fairly little fuss, and they walked for their portion of the book. Where Safi occasionally channeled Iseult and became halfway tolerable, Iseult occasionally channeled Safi and became an utter idiot. This was largely in the interest of forcing Aeduan to rescue her. Everything about their budding romance was forced and felt out of character for both of them, not least because neither of their viewpoints delved into why they might have any interest in one another. Like before, Aeduan’s viewpoint delved into absolutely nothing. Too often, he narrated that he was doing his own actions “for some reason.” Boy, if you don’t know, then I sure don’t, either.
I will grant you that Iseult’s character journey went somewhere interesting! There were two brief and delicious scenes with the Puppeteer, and consequences came of that. We simply were not allowed to examine it in any detail; the book was then over.
Vivia’s viewpoint was introduced. In book one, she was Merik’s older sister, the ambitious heir to the throne who was arranging piratical ventures to get resources. She was delightfully vicious. But her POV grants a different angle: she’s secretly nice, and only acts nasty for her father’s approval and her people’s respect. She even pushes away the first mate she’s in love with (a powerful witch with a mild disability; this could have been Merik/Kullen in book one if Dennard weren’t a coward) to maintain the act. She’s afraid of being hated and shunned if she’s… nicer. Girl, what. The narrative bounds back and forth between her act and her true feelings in a desperate bid to justify all her actions and frame her as the true and rightful queen who was doing it correctly all along. You know, by tearing up the legal trading contracts and risking war on her already war-torn country.
The worst crime of all was upon Merik. I genuinely do not know where his character arc in this book came from. Like Iseult, Merik dithered around and didn’t accomplish much. He spent the book mostly being taught lessons to improve flaws he didn’t have in book one. In this sequel, Merik is forced to admit he was wrong all along: there was never any hope for trading contracts (despite the fact he got two); he shouldn’t have been obsessed with getting the throne (he wasn’t); and he shouldn’t have assumed that the navy needed him and he could rule better than Vivia (who was risking three empires’ wrath by stealing weapons and provisions). He also suffers the constant realization that he doesn’t know his capital city and never understood how his people were suffering (despite the fact that his entire motivation in the first book is how his people are starving). Merik’s self-reflection made me feel insane. I just read book one the other week, and I had no idea what these accusations were talking about.
The most uncomfortable part involved Cam, a young trans man. Cam is only present in Merik’s POV. Merik thinks that Cam is a girl who is disguised as a boy for reasons that aren’t his business. There is no other mention of trans people in the books so far. Yet when Merik calls Cam a girl, both Cam and the narrative drag him for making assumptions and being a terrible person. I’d agree if I thought Merik had any concept of people being trans. As it stands, even I couldn’t tell whether Cam was a trans man or Merik was correct until the aforementioned confrontation. This was in part because the narration refers to him as ‘she’ for all but one page of the book. It’s real uncomfortable and not how I would recommend having a trans character, especially if you’re just going to use them as a gotcha.
I truly don’t think Dennard had a plan for this one. Most characters were given nothing to do. I actually don’t believe a single character in this book was gainfully employed. Alarming flaws were retroactively made up for Merik for the sake of conflict—possibly for the sake of Vivia looking good. The romance was blandly forced at every turn, and all those turns were bad and weird. The place book two ended was not especially different from the place book one ended, except that everyone I love has been disrespected.
It is on SIGHT, Dennard.