Book: Bloodwitch (Witchlands #3)
Author: Susan Dennard
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Cassandra Campbell
BECHDEL TEST: Uncertain, honestly found it hard to keep track!
Content Warnings: Violence, animal death, death of parents, mention of suicide, blood & blood magic
When I read Windwitch back in May, I was a little disappointed as I didn’t enjoy it as much as Truthwitch, there were a lot of pacing issues and it was difficult to follow in places. Thankfully I did enjoy Bloodwitch more and I definitely think it did more to drive the plot forward, though I still found some of the same problems from the other books in the series here. Here is a short synopsis of the book:
Loyalties will be tested as never before.
The Raider King’s plans to claim the Witchlands are under way. Now, his forces sow terror in the mountains, slaughtering innocents. After finding the slain, Aeduan and Iseult race for safety. And despite differing goals, they’ve grown to trust one another in the fight to survive. Yet the Bloodwitch keeps a secret that could change everything . . .
When Merik sacrifices himself to save his friends, he is captured by the Fury. However, Merik isn’t one to give up easily, and he’ll do whatever it takes to save those he loves. And in Marstok, Safi the Truthwitch agrees to help the empress uncover a rebellion. But those implicated are killed and Safi becomes desperate for freedom.
War has come once more to the Witchlands. Perhaps if Safi and Iseult were united, their powers could bring peace. But chaos is not easily tamed.
So I have to start again with my biggest problem in this book, which was again the multiple POVs. Don’t get me wrong, I do love multiple POV books, a lot of multiple POV books are my favourites, but the way Susan Dennard does it makes it really hard to follow. There are POV switches in the middle of chapters and there are about five different character threads to follow, all of whom have POVs which means that often by the time a character’s POV has come around again, I’ve forgotten where they were last! There’s such a sprawling cast I honestly found it quite difficult to remember who was fighting with who.
There’s also a lot of journeying in this book which isn’t my favourite, once again, it seemed to be a lot of buildup and then this kind of mad rush at the end where there were a lot of battles and it would have been nice if things had been a bit more even! I also think it was slightly overly long.
I did enjoy the narration here more than I did in Windwitch, though I still don’t love Cassandra Campbell’s accents for the characters!
Vivia was definitely a highlight for me in this book, she’s really coming into her own as a character and I loved seeing her taking charge and standing up to her father. Her newfound alliance with Vaness was an unexpected surprise and I’d like to see where that relationship goes.
In terms of worldbuilding, we get to see more of Marstok in this book which was pretty cool, though there are still some things that I found kind of confusing, like the doors in the mountains and the role of the Paladins in all this. I’m assuming this will be explained more in future books? It was also interesting to see Iseult’s powers develop more in this book but I’d like more explanation, because it felt a little like she was able to do some of the things she did in this book because she needed to for plot reasons rather than having any real basis in what we’ve learned about her magic so far.
Merik’s part in this story was honestly a little forgettable, I didn’t really feel like it added much the main plot and I’m so confused by what happened to him at the end!
Owl was a great new addition to the cast in this one and I found Isuelt’s frustration with her rather amusing!
There was an animal death scene in this that I didn’t feel was entirely necessary, Dennard could have told us that Aeduan killed his dog without going into any further detail!
I didn’t feel like any of the villains in this book were particularly well developed since we had no real clue as to what any of their motives actually were, which made it very hard to feel any real emotion towards any of them. I also really don’t understand what happened with Evrane at the monastery since the last we saw her she was supporting Safi and Iseult.
There’s also a plot twist with Safi that I didn’t feel made a massive amount of sense, although I suppose we will see the point of it in the next book. I did find Safi kind of frustrating in general in this book because she doesn’t like Vaness using her powers to see if her enemies are telling the truth, but that’s literally her power and she agreed to go to Marstok in the first place?
Once again, the storylines felt all quite separate in this book and I think that added to the confusion because you’re following five or six very different stories as opposed to the stories all tying in together, so although you’re following a lot of different people, it all fits into one big storyline (like say Six of Crows).
When it comes to the romance, there isn’t a massive amount (thankfully) but I did think that Aeduan and Iseult’s relationship was developed really well over the course of this book. I have to say, I’m not massively invested in Safi and Merik, they’ve been separated over the last couple of books and I wasn’t really all that bothered by them in Truthwitch anyway. If I liked Merik more then maybe I would, but honestly I think Safi deserves better!
The ending left me super confused. Honestly I have no idea where most of the characters even were at the end of the book, what had happened to them or what they were going to do next. I feel like this is the problem with having so many characters, it gets impossible to keep track of what has happened to everyone!
Overall, this book was an improvement on the second book, but still carried on a lot of the problems I’ve had throughout the series. Still, it does finally feel like things are actually happening in the Witchlands now, so I look forward to seeing where the story goes in the next book!
My Rating: 3.5/5
My next review will be of my September #RockMyTBR book, Tunnel of Bones (slightly late because of a last minute switch-around), which should be up before the end of the week as I have already finished the book, I just need to write up the review!
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