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A review by capesandcovers
Truthwitch by Susan Dennard
1.0
This book really should've been something I loved, but it wasn't. It kicks off with a heist, stars kickass heroines, strong friendships and "romance". But despite all of that, I ended up really frustrated with the story and almost ended up DNFing at the ~75% mark.
There were a few reasons that this didn't end up working out for me. The first, was that a lot of the book felt like filler. Almost the entire middle section dragged, and felt unnecessarily long. It was reminiscent of a book 2 in one of ~those~ trilogies, where it should've just been a duology. Maybe it was because there was such a large cast of characters to develop? Either way, there was almost no plot in the entire story.
Speaking of characters, that was another reason I stopped. I didn't particularly love any of them. I liked Aeduan and Iseult, but not enough to finish a series this long. Merik felt like a two-dimensional abusive asshole, he was unable to control his temper the whole novel and never evolved past it. Even the dance scene that was supposed to be sexy just came across as some sort of alpha male dominance bullshit.
I didn't like Safiya either. Stating her full name over and over was just kind of weird, like, she's not James Bond??? Everyone had all of this faith in her doing things and being helpful and stuff too, which made no sense because all she did was pick fights and cause problems. I know that it's a YA novel, so I'm not expecting her to act like an adult, but it felt very out of place since the rest of the characters did and the story felt like it was straddling YA and Adult Fantasy. She just came across as very privileged, despite the attempts to prove that she wasn't like other domnas.
Also, Nomatsi racism thing? Including that was so unnecessary and awful. Just because the real world is racist doesn't mean that your fictional one needs to be!! It was a constant stream of it and was just thoroughly unpleasant to have included without a real purpose (other than being a hinderance in Safi's story). The way that everyone graded on being a "good person" by whether or not they verbally or physically attacked Iseult for her ethnicity really showed how little Dennard understands the nuances of racism too, which doesn't bode well for any of the other rep she has in her series. Essentially, a lot of the racism felt like it was there to just further the plot by causing problems, and was something that clearly isn't going to be able to be resolved so the Nomatsi can live without suffering (and even if it was, it doesn't work like that). I know someone mentioned in another review that the Nomatsi are supposed to be Asian (which makes no sense because they were supposed to have pale white skin and even East Asians don't have that???), but the way their encampments were described and the European setting made me assume that they were supposed to be some sort of Romani stand in which is just an extra layer of fucked up.
Overall this was really disappointing. I know a lot of people raved about this series, but it feels like they read a completely different book than I did. The only thing that really held this novel together was the constant bombardment of action, so the reader wanted to know what was going to happen next. The plot was almost nonexistent and the world was never properly developed or explained, which is insane for a 400 page novel. The first few chapters were so promising, but everything quickly spiraled away from that and left me unsatisfied and annoyed that I spent so much time reading it (I should've DNFed). As someone who has used Dennard's writing advice before, and thinks that she has a pretty good knowledge on the topic, learning that she only knows writing mechanics and not how to tell a story was quite the surprise.
There were a few reasons that this didn't end up working out for me. The first, was that a lot of the book felt like filler. Almost the entire middle section dragged, and felt unnecessarily long. It was reminiscent of a book 2 in one of ~those~ trilogies, where it should've just been a duology. Maybe it was because there was such a large cast of characters to develop? Either way, there was almost no plot in the entire story.
Speaking of characters, that was another reason I stopped. I didn't particularly love any of them. I liked Aeduan and Iseult, but not enough to finish a series this long. Merik felt like a two-dimensional abusive asshole, he was unable to control his temper the whole novel and never evolved past it. Even the dance scene that was supposed to be sexy just came across as some sort of alpha male dominance bullshit.
I didn't like Safiya either. Stating her full name over and over was just kind of weird, like, she's not James Bond??? Everyone had all of this faith in her doing things and being helpful and stuff too, which made no sense because all she did was pick fights and cause problems. I know that it's a YA novel, so I'm not expecting her to act like an adult, but it felt very out of place since the rest of the characters did and the story felt like it was straddling YA and Adult Fantasy. She just came across as very privileged, despite the attempts to prove that she wasn't like other domnas.
Also, Nomatsi racism thing? Including that was so unnecessary and awful. Just because the real world is racist doesn't mean that your fictional one needs to be!! It was a constant stream of it and was just thoroughly unpleasant to have included without a real purpose (other than being a hinderance in Safi's story). The way that everyone graded on being a "good person" by whether or not they verbally or physically attacked Iseult for her ethnicity really showed how little Dennard understands the nuances of racism too, which doesn't bode well for any of the other rep she has in her series. Essentially, a lot of the racism felt like it was there to just further the plot by causing problems, and was something that clearly isn't going to be able to be resolved so the Nomatsi can live without suffering (and even if it was, it doesn't work like that). I know someone mentioned in another review that the Nomatsi are supposed to be Asian (which makes no sense because they were supposed to have pale white skin and even East Asians don't have that???), but the way their encampments were described and the European setting made me assume that they were supposed to be some sort of Romani stand in which is just an extra layer of fucked up.
Overall this was really disappointing. I know a lot of people raved about this series, but it feels like they read a completely different book than I did. The only thing that really held this novel together was the constant bombardment of action, so the reader wanted to know what was going to happen next. The plot was almost nonexistent and the world was never properly developed or explained, which is insane for a 400 page novel. The first few chapters were so promising, but everything quickly spiraled away from that and left me unsatisfied and annoyed that I spent so much time reading it (I should've DNFed). As someone who has used Dennard's writing advice before, and thinks that she has a pretty good knowledge on the topic, learning that she only knows writing mechanics and not how to tell a story was quite the surprise.