Windwitch

2.5 stars

I'm loving this series. Especially the characters and magic.

Windwitch didn't go in the direction I was expecting. I was positive I knew who would go to where and when they met up it would be CURTAINS FOR EVERYONE. No. I am not complaining. This book had a different dymanic than Truthwitch and if you're wanting what you got from the first book you'll find yourself disliking this one. I'm okay with letting the author lead down their path instead of the one I have preplanned in my head ( WE'VE ALL DONE IT SO DON'T EVEN LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT).

This is Merik's book. I like Merik. Merik had a lot to learn and this book kicked his ass. This book kicked everyone's ass. Not necessarily in the physical sense. Safi, Iseult, Vaness, Aeduan (AEDUAN MY BABY CAKES GIMME GIMME). Finding out truths about yourself, what you thought was fact, who's really your enemy and who's really not, and that your truth isn't THE truth can knock you back farther back than a fist straight to the middle of your face.

If you're looking for romance you won't get that here. Love, absolutely.

I loved this book the characters and the magic system is so much fun.

Truthwith ???????????????Windwitch ???????????????

I loved this book! Having read the first in the series and enjoying it, I quickly picked up the second. I'll admit I initially picked the series up thinking it would be a YA palate cleanser, but I'd already assumed I wouldn't enjoy it much.

My expectations were blown out of the water with this sequel. Having read the first 125 pages in early May and getting distracted, I had my boyfriend read me a short plot summary (so I couldn't spoil myself) and dove back in. I devoured the book in 2 evenings and I genuinely think the second book is better.

I still have the issue that not enough of the world is explained to the reader. However as it's becoming more and more evident that the characters don't know anything either, I don't mind as much.

3.75 Stars

I'm really struggling with this one. On the one hand, I really care for these characters. I love reading about them and their lives. On the other hand this book was major filler and seemed disjointed at times. Truthwitch was this amazing story of “soul-sisters” on a mission together and there were a few other characters around them for the journey. Windwitch obviously focuses on Merik since he is a windwitch, but we still had POVs of Safi, Iseult, Aeduan, and Merik. Susan Dennard even added a fifth POV with Vivia. I think this is where the disjointedness came from. You have 5 different POVs that are all separate with very little interaction between the various POVs. This means you are sometimes waiting 20+ pages before you are back to a specific character's story.

The pacing for this book was also off for me. Truthwitch was so action-packed and exciting, but I feel like Windwitch ended much the same as Truthwitch did in terms of where we stand for end series. In terms of plot through I do see where Susan Dennard took the time to set things up for future books, I just wish we had had some kind of closure or small plot to tie up in this book to keep in moving forward.

The writing style and the characters continued to be as expected and there was some character development with a few characters, I just wish we had had more. Even though I'm disappointed with this installment, I cannot wait for Bloodwitch especially because it sounds like it will be an Aeduan-centric book!

full review and proper formatting at https://odiumsite.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/windwitch-by-susan-dennard-a-review/

A very disappointing 2

Shockingly, Dennard manages to defy my expectations and make Windwitch worse than Truthwitch. Not because Truthwich was shockingly bad – but because Thruthwitch's best part was how exciting it made future books look. I was prepared to give Windwitch a nice 8/10 but instead Dennard has somehow managed to make the world feel smaller more constrained and failed to give her characters actual personalities.
Truthwitch's ending really left me hopeful. I was looking forward to global war and badass rescues and generally cool things. Maybe some actual character development in Merik and Safi.
Instead we get the most obvious example of middle-book-in-a-trilogy I have ever seen. Most of Truthwitch is almost completely and utterly redundant. It just drags and drags, which is a hard task for a multi-PoV book of only 400 pages. Never have I seen a book in a series more obviously created not to continue to tell a narrative, but to continue a series up to a point at which we can tell and finish a narrative.
What makes all this worse was Truthwitch set up the series to go into a completely different and actual interesting plot arc, but instead Windwitch does its best to slowly dismantle everything and in doing so also makes the previous book feel redundant. And it does this all while making the world and characters feel 2 dimensional, claustrophobic and small – even more so than Truthwitch did. Windwitch suffers from a distinct lack of identity, and does its best to destroy any identity the previous instalment conferred upon the series.
To makes matters even worse, this lack of narrative identity appears to lead to a lack of character identity. New characters to the series in book 2 don't feel like real people- more like puppets who act however the fuck Dennard felt like they should act when she woke up that morning. There is a lack of consistency and personality in many of the characters. Characters from Truthwitch feel less like actual complex living humans and more like artificial intelligence with an inconsistent personality. This excludes Aeduan and Iseult who went from middling support characters to the sole good arc in Truthwitch. Them, combined with me reading this whilst travelling from Paris to Melbourne in the course of 20-something hours, are perhaps the only reason I finished this book. They felt like the only real people in this universe and also had very compelling character development and interactions. There has also yet to be much in the way of character development outside the aforementioned duo.
Dennard's writing feels like she is trying to be more prosaic and intellectual then her writing skills allow her to be. She can't write like Patrick Rothfuss – and that's okay, because despite his somewhat simple writing style, Brandon Sanderson is my favourite writer. Please, Susan, your action scenes are somewhat indecipherable, and the supposedly profound parts are anything but. The writing isn't terrible, but it and this whole book seem to be hitting above its weight.
Also, removing Merik and Safi from their friends has made both their characters even more unbearable. Safi is just annoying as fuck and thinks she is special for some reasons. Iseult's low self-esteem was a little over the top but it's preferable to Safi. Merik is a puddle of self-loathing, poor choices all standing upon the moral high ground. I don't know whether I'll read book 3, but regardless it can't be any worse than Windwitch, can it?