Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

Rating: Enjoyable

Summary:

"Young witches Safiya and Iseult have a habit of finding trouble. After clashing with a powerful Guildmaster and his ruthless Bloodwitch bodyguard, the friends are forced to flee their home. Safi must avoid capture at all costs as she's a rare Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lies. Many would kill for her magic, so Safi must keep it hidden - lest she be used in the struggle between empires. And Iseult's true powers are hidden even from herself. In a chance encounter at Court, Safi meets Prince Merik and makes him a reluctant ally. However, his help may not slow down the Bloodwitch now hot on the girls' heels. All Safi and Iseult want is their freedom, but danger lies ahead. With war coming, treaties breaking and a magical contagion sweeping the land, the friends will have to fight emperors and mercenaries alike. For some will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch."

This is a pretty hyped up book which I was interested in from the description. I was lucky that my library ebook loan system had it in there. I am not sure it lives up to its hype though, it was an enjoyable read and I will read the next book but I did have problems with the story.

My first issue was that Safiya (Safi) is an idiot. A selfish, deluded brat. Everything that went wrong in this book was because she never stopped to think about anyone other then herself and her needs. She even admitted, several times, she sucks at making plans, and time and time again she would ignore people who had perfectly good and well thought out plans made by people who generally so this sort of thing for a living, and do her own idiotic thing. Usually resulting in the death of others or the near death of her and her friends. I just wanted to yell at her almost the entire way through the book. Also her decisions made no freaking sense and the one time she actually presented a good plan to someone who has lots of experience and should know better, they shot her down and proposed a seriously risky and dumb idea (which resulted in mayhem, death and fighting).

My other peeve was that I also got annoyed with reading "that that" in a sentence or something similar. I can't think of specific examples now but when that double up happened it did bug me as it happened a couple of times. I am not sure what the technical term for it is, but I have seen it creeping into modern books, and it bugs me. But thats one of my peeve's not necessarily a fault of the book.

So you would think  after that complaining I would dislike this book. Well I didn't. I still quite enjoyed it, even though my eyeballs got quite the work out.

For me this was like a guilty pleasure book. Similar to those guilty pleasure tv shows that we all have, that we like despite it being almost everything we normally dislike in a show. Like The Kardashians, or Daytime Soapies (mine being reality shows like Amazing Race and Survivor). The characters are badly acted, the dialogue is predictable and the show is predictable (yes even reality shows!). We like to hate those shows (and we all have one) and we like to complain about the awfulness of the show. I am not saying this book is badly written or predictable but my point is that even though there was a side of it that annoyed me I still continued reading, and still liked it.

This book was a little like that for me. Even though I practically yelled at the character Safi for her stupidity and rolled my eyes at her decisions. I still enjoyed reading this book and will read the second book.

The action was well written and fast paced. The world created is interesting and detailed. I liked the story and I'm curious as to where the story goes.

If you like modern young adult fantasy you will probably like this book.