Early Review – Warrior Witch (Malediction Trilogy, Book 3) by Danielle L. Jensen (3.5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot
Release Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0857664693
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in the Malediction Trilogy
Source: eGalley from NetGalley.com
Rating: 3.5/5 stars

“Cécile and Tristan have accomplished the impossible, but their greatest challenge remains: defeating the evil they have unleashed upon the world.

As they scramble for a way to protect the people of the Isle and liberate the trolls from their tyrant king, Cécile and Tristan must battle those who’d see them dead. To win, they will risk everything. And everyone.

But it might not be enough. Both Cécile and Tristan have debts, and they will be forced to pay them at a cost far greater than they had ever imagined.”

I think this book was my least favorite of the three. There is just too much going on at points with all the different story threads…strangely this made the book kind of boring and difficult to read. I think part of my issue is that there are so many characters and so much going on. A little index with the characters, synopsis of the story thus far, or just a little more recapping would have made it much easier to engage in the story and get into this book.

The book does pick up some in the second half. A big driver in this story is the fact that both Tristan and Cecile are required to deliver on payments owed; Tristan to the Winter Queen and Cecile to the Summer King. The fey play a much bigger role in this book and honestly it seemed like a bit too much when thrown in with the Troll, human, and half-human politics all going. However, it does all come together nicely in the end.

Tristan and Cecile spend vast portions of the book apart dealing with the politics and issues they are faced with separately. In the second half of the book they finally team up again and I enjoyed watching them work together. I did like how things wrapped up but I struggled a bit to stay focused on the story.

I thought there were some issues with the story as well. I had trouble engaging with the story and kept finding myself falling asleep or struggling to pay attention. Additionally, the chapters alternate between Tristan and Cecile and honestly their voices sounded a lot the same. Many times I had to go back to the beginning of the chapter to be reminded who was speaking; they just didn’t have voices that were different enough.

Overall this was a good conclusion to this series, I ended up enjoying how things wrapped up. However, I did struggle quite a bit with staying engaged with the story early on (I kept falling asleep or wandering from it). I think there was just too much going on; too many characters and the plot was a bit sloppy. Tristan and Cecile sound very alike in their different chapters and this caused more issues for me because I kept forgetting whose POV I was reading from. I really loved the first two books in this series, but I thought this one was a lot weaker. I would still recommend to fans of YA fantasy; there are some neat ideas in here, some great magic, and some sweet romance.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge