I had no clue about what I would be getting into when I picked this book to be my audio book while I was at work, but I can truly say that I enjoyed this book from begining to end. 

It takes place in a fantastical world where many people are born with specific styles of magic, and they each learn how to utelize it in different ways. I suppose an easy way of thinking about it is like Avatar the Last Air Bender, but for a hundred different things instead of just the elements. As the title of the book indicates, the Truthwitch is the focus of this book. The Truthwitch being a young woman named Safiya. Truthwitch's are rare and due to that rarity, rumors have been spread about them, but their main power simply lies in their ability to know the truth from a lie. This does include illusions and even mental manipulations, though, so between the ability to know for certain when a person is knowingly lying to you about what they plan to do, or even how they are acting and the ability to discern illusory and mental manipulation magic, it can be pretty useful. This is why Truthwitches are both feared and sought out. 

Her friend (though the term chosen sister feels more accurate) is a Threadwitch by the name of Iseult. Threadwitches are able to see energies surrounding people as well as their connections to others. The story follows many people in different places, but overall, I feel the main protagonists of this story are Safiya and Isult, as the story begins and ends with the story their choices made.

It begins with the two of them being forced to leave town because of some trouble they got into. The trouble led a Bloodwitch to them, and Bloodwitches can follow a person to the ends of the earth so long as they picked up the scent of the person's blood. 

Not thinking that the trouble they got into was too bad that they would never come back, they packed a few things and made a plan to leave town until things cooled down. As the book is 432 pages, you can imagine that a few things happened along the way. I won't spoil any of that though. I will just say that this book had wonderful action, and interesting magic system, well thought out and easy to follow politics, and enough nail biting drama to keep you intrigued and looking forward to the next book.

I found this book randomly as a Rick Riordan presents book. I had no clue about the Hmong culture before going into this. This meant that unlike things such as the Egyptian, Greecian, Roman, and Norse stories that I have read from Rick Riordan's books, I was completely in the dark with all the characters and stories that I was introduced to. The thing that made it most interesting to me was the fact that the author is very aware that many people will not know much about these myths or the Hmong culture in general, so the book helps you out with most of it. Introducing you to it and educating you on it, but in a way that makes it to where you don't even realize that's what's happening.

The book introduces you to the main character, Pahua, and her family at the start. The author tries their best not to info dump on you more than would be understood for someone telling you a story. It's written from Pahua's perspective, and therefore the way the story is told comes from the perspective of a middle school girl. She's had to deal with people thinking she's weird all her life for various reasons such as being Hmong in America, the fact she sees spirits and interacts with them, and even living life as a child of divorced parents. She has found ways to cope, and they are natural ways someone might cope with any number of these.

Once the story actually gets started, you feel for the girl as she is thrust into a world she had only heard in stories years ago when she was younger. The author's way of helping the reader understand the myths is done through her own ignorance of her culture. Essentially, she knows just enough to constantly get her into trouble, then manages to figure out enough to get her out of trouble, and most of the time it is through non-violent means. This makes even more sense when you remember that the girl is like eleven years old, so how could she stand up to many of these creatures?

The thing that I found to be my most eye rolling moments were also done well. Yes, I rolled my eyes, but it was not at the story telling, it was that I kept yelling at the book "Listen to the cat!" The cat I refer to is this cat spirit that has attatched himself to Pahua, by the name of Miv. He is probably my favorite character in the book, because even though he is dry and kinda salty, he is shown to care about Pahua a number of times.

Of course you can't have a book like this without having the badass fighter too, and that comes in the form of a Shaman Warrior girl named Zhong. Though she's about the same age as Pahua, she's been training for this type of stuff for a while. In terms of character growth, watch this girl. She has wonderful growth from annoyed (and annoying) to good friend. 

From the first mistake that triggers everything and until the end where you learn a great many truths, this book held my attention, so I fully reccomend anyone give it a read.

The first time I heard of this book was when my youngest child became obsessed with the movie adaptation, and while the movie is a fun story, it was nothing compared to the book. I read it to him as a bedtime story but soon found myself extending our storytime because I fell in love with the book.

It follows Sophie in much the same way as the movie at the start. She works in a hat shop, is her family's oldest child, and becomes cursed. While wandering in search, she comes across the wizard Howl's castle and makes a deal with Calcifer.

Unlike the movie, however, Sophie has two sisters and Howl is infatuated with one of them. She stays on as a cleaning lady, just like in the movie, but this is about where the similarities end.

As I said, the movie was fun, but the book has so much more in it. The magic, while slightly less spectacular, it has so much more depth to it. The adventures that occur give so much more life to the world and make you so much more invested in everything that is happening.

I recommend this book highly to anyone and everyone, for it has something in it for everyone out there. 

I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free for this book, but if you have not read up to this book already, I would reccomend not continuing further than this sentance. 

I began this book as soon as I finished the previous one simply because I needed to know what happened next. If it has been a while since you read Dead or Alive, I will remind you that at the end of that book Valkarie became the Child of the Faceless Ones. In terms of cliffhangers, this particular cliff hanger took the case. Not since Darquesse have we seen such a dramatic moment in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, so obviously I needed to see how the author handled this drastic alteration in Valkarie's character.

The last time he did something like this, with the appearance of Darquesse, the next book actually began with Stephanie, or Valkarie's reflection. That was an interesting way to do it. It allowed us to see the world through slightly different eyes, but he would not be able to do something like that again since Stephanie died, nor would it even make since to do something like that. 

Within the first few chapters of the book it gave us a wonderful answer to this question though. It was intriguing how he chose to do this, and even gave me some insight into how some people in the real world. 

I read Marissa Meyer's book, Fairest, earlier this year and the way that Derek Landy wrote Valkerie as the Child of the Faceless Ones character reminded me somewhat of how well Marissa Meyer wrote Levana in that book. For those of you that are unaware, Fairest is a prequel book to Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series. It follows the events that led to one of her antagonists rising to power, and more interestingly, it follows the events from the perspective of said antagonist. It is a brilliant way of showing how the protagonist of a book does not neccesarily have to be the good guy or even the person that you like, yet you still need to read on.

While Derek Landy was not forced to write a villain and make you like them, he did put himself into the position of writing someone going through something that was entirely out of character for them. The feeling I got from reading the first half of this book was very much the same feeling I have when I am watching someone make poor decisions and being powerless to stop them because they believe themselves to be right.

Moving away from Valkarie for a moment. Another thing that you may recall from the ending of the previous book is the fact that the Faceless Ones have begun returning. Not only that, but what happened to Ogre, and what are Sebastian and Darquesse doing? If you have theories about either of them, I will tell you now, you are probably wrong. I had my own theories, and it was fun to watch as my theories changed and then I discovered most of them to be wrong.

Derek Landy writes his Skulduggery books in trilogy formats, so once a third book comes out you know that all the events will be coming together to answer almost all of your questions before giving you new questions to ponder as you finish the final chapter.

Thus far trilogies have ended with the Faceless Ones coming to our world and then being sent away along with Skulduggery himself, The Necromancers trying to end the lives of billions with their Death Bringer, Darquesse believing she destroyed everything in the universe then going off to fight the Faceless Ones, and an actual Kaiju battle. 

If you, like me, have no clue how Derek Landy can surprise us anymore, then I would love to see your face when he does it once more. 

At the end of the day, I am still so happy that I discovered this series, and I am lookng forward to whatever he does next.