Curse of the Night Witch

A good preteen (ages 10 to 14) book with lots of fun and lessons to learn along the way. Enjoyable for all ages.

I loved the characters, they ended up being a great set of friends. I loved the setting and the magic. The depth of the world added to the adventure. And the ending was great, though it ends while setting up the next story.

Tor wishes to breathe underwater but his embem is leadership. He makes a wish that whisks him far from his home. The adventure is in my opinion a little slow at times but there lots of action in it.

3½ stars. This book was pretty good. I'd have liked it better if it wouldn't have ended on a cliffhanger, but anymore unfortunately I find that's pretty par for the course. At least it managed to wrap up the main plot of this book, though it does leave us on the last page with kind of a WTF moment to hook you into book 2.I think most of my lack of enthusiasm about this book is due to my being approximately 3 times the age of the target audience. This is actually a well written middle grade story, & I feel that kids in that age group will probably really enjoy this. It has a fun quest format similar to the Percy Jackson or Aru Shah books, but different enough that even an adult reader doesn't get bored.I liked the characters & the growth arc of Tor, the main character, is realistically done. His discovery about taking what you have for granted when you should feel blessed to have it is something that all people learn at some point in time, so I definitely feel like it's a good little "moral of the story" that is age appropriate & relevant to teens\tweens especially.I liked the idea of the emblems on Emblem Island, & I really enjoyed the legends of the island that were interspersed between the chapters in this book. They added history & a greater sense of authenticity to the culture of the island. The descriptions of the places Tor & his two friends must travel to or through were all vivid & uniquely drawn.The writing style was easy to read without being dumbed down; you could tell it is written for a younger audience but as an adult I did have fun reading it. It reminded me a lot of middle grade books I used to read when I was a teen\tween back in the early '90s. The pacing was good, moments of excitement occuring regularly throughout, with intermittent exposition or introspection from Tor. I did find the end was a bit rushed, leaving a couple of subplots during their journey that didn't really seem to get fully wrapped up. Maybe they'll get resolved in upcoming sequels.Bottom line, I would recommend this book to tweens & younger teens in particular, although teenagers & adults will probably like it was well. It was a fun & fast paced little read with a bit of novelty to it. I will probably read the sequels.

This book is a little slow starting out and may be hard for kids to fully follow if they are reading it independently. It is okay but I don’t think we will be reading anymore in the series once we finish this one.