Witch Song (ARC)

From the wonderful ARC tour site, Around the World Tours (link at the end of the post) I received Witch Song by Amber Argyle. CAUTION: Lots and lots of singing, your ear drums will feel very, very sore after finishing... with that side effect let the review begin!

Summary:The world is changing. Once, Witch Song controlled everything from the winds to the shifting of the seasons-but not anymore. All the Witches are gone, taken captive by a traitor. All but Brusenna. As the echo of their songs fades, the traitor grows stronger. Now she is coming for Brusenna. Her guardian has sworn to protect her, but even he can't stop the Dark Witch. Somehow, Brusenna has to succeed where every other Witch has failed. Find the traitor. Fight her. Defeat her. Because if Brusenna doesn't, there won't be anything left to save. I thought this book had terrible characters but a good plot, that's really the only reason I finished it. This book takes place in the Renaissance (my guess, it is never stated) and there's a lot of hatred in the world for witches. The book begins with our heroine (one of the lamest ever I might add) so timid she won't stand up to a cheating village merchant. A chapter later we find out that she's the one who's supposed to free the "W.W.W. (World Wide Witches)" and bring normality back to our world. Like we were thinking the first time we meet Harry -- glasses, bad hair, and all -- we think "Wait? This is the guy that's supposed to save the world?" and shrug our shoulders.

You might be thinking that, like Harry Potter, she'd surprise us all and actually be a classy hero who never stops fighting. Instead we have a very timid, frail hero who's afraid to lead, follow or get out of the way. Instead she just goes around preaching uncertainty.

In fact, I didn't really like any characters in this except of course for the adorable frog man Pogg, who was pretty awesome, I mean how can you be something called a frog man and not be?

From reading above you'd think I didn't like this book, but stop right there! That was just the character analysis! Though it was hard to get into. After a day I was able to dive in and finish it a day later. The plot was pretty unique besides the everyday, YA run of the mill fantasy romance qualities. Argyle had a rather good idea, take the stereotype idea for a witch, add singing, and change them from "evil" to "good" was all a pretty good idea.

This book did feel like the start of something big, that cannot be denied, and the entire time it felt like Argyle was holding back the best book she could write.

I thought the best part of this book was the build-up towards the final battle and the final battle was just a bit of a letdown because all they did was sing and throw seeds. But just to let you know three-quarters through the book the plot changes completely, but I won't spoil what happens for you.

Witch Song is an exciting, musical, novel that will appeal to readers of books like Ella Enchanted.

3.5/5

Book Battle Update: This is my 16th book read in the book battle, Maddz has read 17, one to go!

Princess Bookie Around the World ARC Tours

This book willed be released September 1, preorder it on Amazon.