A very satisfying book. I actually really enjoyed the romance and thought they had great chemistry, but I was here mostly for the mystery, which was very satisfying. Never been more relieved for a second book!

An absolutely fun read, especially if you enjoy fantasy reads. I loved watching Miles try to figure out what's wrong with his patients and solve the mystery of the murdered magic user all while quickly falling head over heals in love. The characters are really fun, and the pace of the story felt really well done. Definitely will be one of my favorites for 2022.

📘The Gist 📘: While trying to unravel a mysterious illness he sees with magic without letting anyone know he has magic, Miles is visited by a dying man who passes on a dire warning. This adds solving the murder, falling in love, and avoiding his family's notice to his growing list of problems. 

📒Representation📒: mlm mc, mental healthcare

💕 For readers looking for 💕: a fun and adventurous fantasy, secret magic, mystery, magical others, heartwarming romance, political drama, an undertone that things are not as ok as they appear 

Really a 3.5.  I was ready to give this book at least 4.5 stars before the last 20% or so, when the pacing went really wonky.  The murder mystery introduced in the first chapter developed slowly and often competed strangely with the mystery of the mystery illness Miles' patients were afflicted by.  The fact that Tristan was on a timetable kept making me feel like things should be moving faster than they were, but I was reasonably entertained throughout.  Though, by half way through the book I was beginning to suspect that there were just too many threads (murder, mystery illness, family drama, politicking, falling in love, the real story behind the war, and then late in the game, the story behind the asylums) for it all to be wrapped up in a satisfying way.

Aand, I was right.  The overall result was that certain plots lingered forever (for a plot introduced in the very first chapter, the murder felt like it took forever for them to advance it), while others never felt like they were given their due (the romance worked for me, but it advanced with little real focus on it...I could have done with a little less of a fade to black, is what I'm saying), OR, they burst on the scene late and so suddenly that didn't feel like I'd been properly prepared for them (the final revelation felt like there's no way I could have figured it out because the world wasn't sufficiently explained to me, but it felt like MILES should have figured it out sooner.)  The whole ending of the book felt very abrupt and in fact felt like the story wasn't really finished at all, but rather that this was where the book needed to end so the second could begin.  Not to mention that Tristan's situation felt very carefully constructed to bring about some of the events at the end (

I mean, they wouldn't have had any way out of their last battle without Tristan just happening to be who he was, and the timing just happening to work out that the Amaranthines were waiting for Tristan to return, AND the Amaranthine duchess just happening to be overly interested in his welfare and waiting impatiently for him at the gate so they could all ride through to the rescue - it was so hamhanded that I could tell early on that that was why his backstory was what it was, so his people could ride in to the rescue.

)

Miles also felt a little uneven.  He put himself in situations that I thought he should have seen coming, or he was ok with situations I thought he should be more nervous in, or he was focused on one thing when I thought he should be focused on something else. 

I mean, really, how many times was he going to trust his sister after she proved herself untrustworthy?  Too many.

  Likewise the worldbuilding, which was cool on first glance, but after I think about it some, it felt like a stretch for a society to come about that way. 

Would a country really just not NOTICE that its newfangled power source was never really explained?  And who really came up with the idea of snagging souls and using them for fuel?  Who thought that was a good idea?   Did the mages feel like the Amaranthines would just not NOTICE that souls were suddenly not appearing?  And the whole idea of "witches magic is bad but mages magic is good" seemed too artificial for me.  They used to kill witches, but they were totally fine with high-class mages?  ????  Or perhaps the mages were supposed to be only doing their magic in secret, and I never really twigged to that because Miles was so steeped in magic I assumed the rest of the country knew about it, too? 

 

All of this wasn't enough to throw me out of the story, but it did leave me feeling somewhat unsatisfied by the end.

 3.5/5

Miles Singer has run from his past. His magical ability to heal is treated as nothing more than a trick by witching society, so determined to do some good Miles enlisted and went off to war. After serving, Miles goes into psychiatry and is determined to help other soldiers who are also suffering from PTSD. But the illness seems like more than just PTSD. When a fatally poisoned patient exposes Miles’ healing gift and his witchmark, he must put his anonymity and freedom at risk to investigate his patient’s murder.

This Edwardian world of magic was really interesting. For the first half we don't really see how witching society works as Miles is incognito and hiding from all witches. But when his family comes back into the picture, we see what Miles has run from and see his worst fears come true. The one thing I really liked about the world was that gender wasn't a factor in magical society. It was all based on primary mages and secondary ones. Primary mages can control the weather and are called storm-singers. All other witches with magic are considered secondary and used as batteries to power the primary mages with a bond that basically takes the secondary's will.

The plot kept me guessing the entire time and the last 30% was basically my brain imploding by what had happened to Miles patients and other witches. I did also enjoy the relationship that developed between Miles and Tristan, but the pacing of it felt a bit weird--a little too insta-lovey for me. I'm definitely curious to see what will happen next.

Rep: Achillean male MC with PTSD, achillean male love interest. Many side characters/patients with PTSD.

CWs: Violence, alcohol consumption, blood, confinement of patients, death, death of parent--flashback, drug use, gaslighting, grief, kidnapping, medical content, mental illness (PTSD), murder--flashback, physical abuse, forced enslavement of MC and many side characters, implied sexual content, suicidal thoughts, talk of committing suicide, suicide attempts and side characters who commit suicide. 

I’m afraid the World Fantasy Award has lost all credibility with me now that I know this book won it in 2019. I can’t understand how such an incredibly poorly edited book won such a prestigious award. Seriously- I was shocked this wasn’t self published because it read like fan fiction.

The author assumes the readers already know everything about the world and it’s races and she never bothers to explain. Her world building is nearly nonexistent. She clearly wanted to set it in Edwardian England, but for some unknown reason she instead makes a fantasy world based of off it with a few minor changes instead. Monday becomes Firstday for example. These changes weren’t necessary and didn’t add anything to the world. So much is never explained. What is Tristan? His race is never explained and we are left to assume he’s something like a fae. How are secondaries determined? How are they assigned? Miles seemed to grow up knowing he would be his younger sister’s secondary, but it seems his mother was secondary to his father. Why wasn’t he bound as a child? If they have to be a certain age before the binding that should have been explained. What exactly is a witch mark? The magic system of this fantasy world makes zero sense because the author glossed over it. 

The romance, if you can call it that, is instalove. We are told they are falling in love versus being shown it. They barely know each other at the end of the book, yet somehow they decide to get married. There’s no development of their relationship. They eat a few meals together and Miles moves in after knowing Tristan a few days, but we rarely see them discuss anything but the mystery. Tristan promised to teach Miles how to use his magic, but that never really happens either. Miles mainly stares into mirrors while Tristan reads a book. There is a ton of buildup towards Miles and Tristan finally sleeping together, but it fails to live up to expectations. We are told they go into a bedroom and that’s it. It kind of felt like the author wasn’t up to the task of writing a gay sex scene. It was weird for a book that’s been lauded for its inclusivity. The whole romance consisted of maybe two kisses and a bedroom scene that we don’t get to read. Does that really count as inclusive?? Tristan is a cardboard cut out of a character. At one point Miles lists his faults to his sister and they aren’t even believable because we haven’t seen any of the faults he’s describing!

The character of Grace was all over the place! The author sets it up so you will absolutely despise her, but then wants you to sympathize with her in the end. She’s the main character of the next book and that ruined any chance that I’d continue with this series. Her character is a sociopath! She would literally rather die than release her brother because she’s so determined to inherit her father’s role. I read the audiobook version, but if I hadn’t I would have thrown the book across the room when Miles refused to kill her to reclaim his freedom. She claims she wants to make life better for the secondaries, but then once her brother is bound to her she betrays him at every turn. Her motivations for wanting to improve life for the secondaries was clear as mud. Apparently it had something to do with her childhood sweetheart? Then at the end she suddenly decides to free Miles after all. No idea why. She just does. Her character makes no sense! I know people were very excited for the sequel because Grace is supposed to be in a f/f relationship, but that makes no sense either. She spent most of the book making homophobic statements about her brother’s preferences. 

I wanted to root for Miles, but it was hard to like his character. He claims that being bound is his worst nightmare, but then he immediately forgives his sister for doing it. He had zero spine when it came to his sister and that really made it difficult for me to empathize with him. He just resigns himself to his fate. His refusal to hate his sister didn’t seem realistic to me. If my sister was constantly homophobic towards me, bound me so she could steal my power, and was trying to arrange my marriage (while ignoring my sexuality) for her political gain, I wouldn’t be falling all over myself to help her. 

I think the author suffered from too many ideas for the plot and that’s where a good editor would have been helpful. Instead, the three mysteries are barely developed and then loosely tied together in the end. The mystery with the veterans was probably the most interesting, but Miles barely investigates it. Really he only solves everything due to luck. The villains she spent most of the book setting up just disappear and we never learn their motivations. Instead his father is the man behind the curtain. The conclusion of the mystery is unsatisfying because you don’t understand how they got there when they did so little sleuthing! This could have been really interesting if it had been fleshed out properly. Instead the author bogged down the book with tons of scenes that did little to advance the plot. It was at once both too slow and too rushed in regards to pacing. It really seemed like the author forgot about certain plot points at time. Like what did Miles’ landlady see in Grace’s tea leaves? Why did Robin disappear for most of the book? Why did the other doctor have it out for Miles? The book ends extremely abruptly after Tristan proposed. It left a ton of loose ends and I’m not even sure what the next book will be about because of how awkward the ending is.

The book had a ton of potential but was ultimately pretty disappointing. Usually historical fantasy is right up my alley, but this was a big miss. I think the author could be pretty decent someday, but she definitely needs a stronger editor. 

If I could give a book more than 5 stars, this would be it. It has everything I love in a novel (queer, romance, supernatural, historical), along with amazing world-building and many fleshed-out characters. I want more time with Miles and Tristan.

I'm still giddy about Witchmark. This book hits the ground running and shouts brusquely over one shoulder that the reader had best keep pace. I felt like a detective slowly discovering secrets; the world was complex and the characters were immediately fascinating. 

It's world-building by immersion with very few asides and explanations for the first third of the book. By the time it deigns to pause for backstory it's all details of a personal nature; political alignments and players in power. It assumes that the reader knows whatever someone growing up here would have been taught, but it casually drops in just enough explanation that I felt a sense of triumph every time some previously opaque bit of detail was clarified. 

Even when I didn't yet know where I was I knew why I cared. Though the explanations took a bit to arrive, the characters were great from the start. Miles was likable immediately, the main plot kicks off with a bang, er, with a person desperately in need of his help, and it was a really fun read. I have a bias towards liking the character, Robin, but everyone felt really engaging (even the ones I don't share a name with). Flipping through it I see some stuff in the early bits that I didn't know were actually important when I started and it makes me want to re-read this immediately to soak up more detail. 

The characterization is solid, there's a quaint understated-ness in certain areas which made it really feel like it maps on to a vaguely 1900's, quasi-British sensibility while still being its own thing. Those points of familiarity helped ground me as I got a sense of how this world describes itself, while gradually making it clear that this was truly some fantasy land as the book kept rolling. 

I loved the ending, I finished this book really happy about how everything ended up and very excited to read the next one.