Review: Sightwitch

Sightwitch by Susan Dennard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This time last year, I was expecting we'd get Bloodwitch, but instead, Dennard's pushed that one ahead to 2019 and given us, instead, the novella Sightwitch to tide us fans over. And...honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this one. I mean, it's not a bad little story, and it's a pretty nice change of pace after Windwitch proved disappointing due to its bloated character sheet. While Sightwitch has a smaller character sheet by necessity, it's not much better than the second full-length novel of this series for it. Largely because over its little-more-than-200-page length, we get a lot of not only POV switches (first-person, unlike any of the other books, because they're done in the style of diary entries), but also time switches as well, with frequent flashbacks in the style of Lost or Arrow. With so many switches throughout such a short story, it's very hard to follow the plot. But then again, with the generally Gothic style of this convent setting, that may well have been intentional on Dennard's part. I'll just assume it was...and I'll also hope that some of the more unusual aspects of this book, like the greater use of illustrations, will cross over into the remaining sequels.

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