Truthwitch - Susan Dennard
So I quite enjoyed Truthwitch.
It's YA, a fairly typical fantasy story about two young women, Iseult and Safi, who are Threadsisters - essentially very good friends. Iseult is a Threadwitch - she can see people's emotions as "Threads" hovering around their bodies - and Safi is a rare Truthwitch, who can determine truth from lies. The fantasyland they inhabit is on the verge of war - a truce that has kept them at peace for twenty years is about to expire, and negotiations for another look to be, in the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, short. The various warring kingdoms will, apparently, stop at nothing to get their hands on the Truthwitch, for various reasons, and Safi and Iseult have to navigate the various political factions as best they can.
The real strong point of Truthwitch is the friendship between Safi and Iseult: we see events from both of their POVs, so they're equally important in the book; they're not played off against each other; their relationship isn't made secondary to a romantic one (although there is a romantic interest in the book); and they're actually allowed to love each other as friends. It's rare to see female friendships like this one in YA or in fantasy, where romance is so often more important.
In other respects, though, it's fairly conventional, and that's part of the reason why I enjoyed it: it's comfortingly cod-medieval without coming with the unexamined racism, sexism and classism that comes with most medieval high fantasy (although racism and sexism do exist in this world). The world-building isn't fantastic - we never really get a good sense of what is so valuable about Safi or why magic-users Cleave (their magic goes bad and they explode? I'm not sure) - and there were a number of irritating typos in my hardback copy. I'm not grabbed by the idea of continuing with the series, but it was a nicely comforting read to sink into in the mornings over breakfast.
