A review by wandering_not_lost
Witchmark by C.L. Polk

adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.5

Really a 3.5.  I was ready to give this book at least 4.5 stars before the last 20% or so, when the pacing went really wonky.  The murder mystery introduced in the first chapter developed slowly and often competed strangely with the mystery of the mystery illness Miles' patients were afflicted by.  The fact that Tristan was on a timetable kept making me feel like things should be moving faster than they were, but I was reasonably entertained throughout.  Though, by half way through the book I was beginning to suspect that there were just too many threads (murder, mystery illness, family drama, politicking, falling in love, the real story behind the war, and then late in the game, the story behind the asylums) for it all to be wrapped up in a satisfying way.

Aand, I was right.  The overall result was that certain plots lingered forever (for a plot introduced in the very first chapter, the murder felt like it took forever for them to advance it), while others never felt like they were given their due (the romance worked for me, but it advanced with little real focus on it...I could have done with a little less of a fade to black, is what I'm saying), OR, they burst on the scene late and so suddenly that didn't feel like I'd been properly prepared for them (the final revelation felt like there's no way I could have figured it out because the world wasn't sufficiently explained to me, but it felt like MILES should have figured it out sooner.)  The whole ending of the book felt very abrupt and in fact felt like the story wasn't really finished at all, but rather that this was where the book needed to end so the second could begin.  Not to mention that Tristan's situation felt very carefully constructed to bring about some of the events at the end (
I mean, they wouldn't have had any way out of their last battle without Tristan just happening to be who he was, and the timing just happening to work out that the Amaranthines were waiting for Tristan to return, AND the Amaranthine duchess just happening to be overly interested in his welfare and waiting impatiently for him at the gate so they could all ride through to the rescue - it was so hamhanded that I could tell early on that that was why his backstory was what it was, so his people could ride in to the rescue.
)

Miles also felt a little uneven.  He put himself in situations that I thought he should have seen coming, or he was ok with situations I thought he should be more nervous in, or he was focused on one thing when I thought he should be focused on something else. 
I mean, really, how many times was he going to trust his sister after she proved herself untrustworthy?  Too many.
  Likewise the worldbuilding, which was cool on first glance, but after I think about it some, it felt like a stretch for a society to come about that way. 
Would a country really just not NOTICE that its newfangled power source was never really explained?  And who really came up with the idea of snagging souls and using them for fuel?  Who thought that was a good idea?   Did the mages feel like the Amaranthines would just not NOTICE that souls were suddenly not appearing?  And the whole idea of "witches magic is bad but mages magic is good" seemed too artificial for me.  They used to kill witches, but they were totally fine with high-class mages?  ????  Or perhaps the mages were supposed to be only doing their magic in secret, and I never really twigged to that because Miles was so steeped in magic I assumed the rest of the country knew about it, too? 
 

All of this wasn't enough to throw me out of the story, but it did leave me feeling somewhat unsatisfied by the end.
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