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readingrobin 's review for:

Witchlight by Jessi Zabarsky
2.5
adventurous emotional funny mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

While the art style is absolutely gorgeous, I felt like the story was a little too jumbled to enjoy. Some plot threads start and stop so abruptly, like "eh, tired of that direction we're going in so let's do a bit of a turn in the middle of the story." At some points it feels like the plot is just sort of going on without doing much, only to make a sudden lurch towards the end. Given some development, I think Lelek and Sanja could have been stronger characters, but they just seem there. Lelek's desire to learn to defend herself with Sanja as her teacher peters out during near the third act of the comic, which almost makes the inciting incident of her kidnapping Sanja somewhat pointless. Some character motivations either come out of nowhere or are so muddled that it's hard to get a sense of what they truly want in the narrative. I wonder if the author was going for a more vague form of storytelling, more abstract, but, in this case, it only led to more confusion than enjoyment.