Confusing from the start, reading Witchshadow by Susan Dennard is a constant bouncing between perspectives, settings, and storylines. Sometimes switching between points of view within the same chapter, at times what was actually happening became hard to follow and difficult to unravel. The story mainly follows Safi and Iseult, who are Threadsisters, a term that describes family not actually born of shared blood, who spend nearly the entire book apart, both trying to fulfill their individual goals. Safi was attempting to escape from the watchful eye of the man she unwillingly married, Emperor Henrick, to find and rescue her imprisoned Uncle, which was made much more difficult since Henrick forced her to become a Hell-Bard. Those are soldiers that the Emperor controls with Threadstones and nooses forcibly tied around the Hell-Bards necks. She relied on the help of the Emperor’s nephew, Leopold, who Safi knew and disliked from childhood, but whom the reader discovers is much more than he seems. Meanwhile, Iseult is on the run with Owl, a small but powerful young girl, and is forced to use her ability to Cleave by snapping people's Threads in order to defend themselves.. Iseult hates to use this power, creating an internal conflict within her as it is one of her only defenses to protect herself and Owl with. Aeduan, who is a Bloodwitch possessed by an ancient evil force, has a lesser but still important role in the story. While possessed he was hunting Iseult and Owl, which put Iseult in a difficult spot of not wanting to hurt him because of their previous relationship that Aeduan could not remember. The other characters whose perspectives were shown were Vivia and Stix, whose storylines barely intersected with Safi, Iseult, and Aeduan's. Vivia is a Queen/pirate whose father betrayed her, and she spends most of the book with her enemy turned potential lover Vaness, an Empress of an opposing kingdom with whom she shares a predictable, albeit sweet, romance. Her storyline left something to be desired, it was intriguing yet it was so vastly different from what was going on in the rest of the book that it was hard to connect to it. Stix is Vivia’s Threadsister, and it is revealed that she is actually a Paladin, an immortal being that is reincarnated and has an undetermined amount of powers, something that was a theme throughout the novel. The magic system is by far the most confusing part of the Witchlands, and it revolves around Threads, which every living being has. Just as I felt as though I figured it out, the rules changed, and at times it felt like some character’s power knew no bounds. Although Dennard was successful in creating and developing riveting characters and storylines, her downfall was writing in almost too much action, to a point where the reader could hardly keep track of everything that was simultaneously occurring. It overruled the fascinating storyline and characters, to the point where the book was hard to get through because of all the blanks that needed to be filled in. Witchshadow did have its successes, but the struggle to keep up with the constant info-dumping of magical information along with the perspective switching made the story fall flat of what it could have achieved.