Oh boy, this was rough.

A Conspiracy of Truths follows Chant, an extremely old man who is cast in prison for being a blackwitch and he turns to his lifelong skill of telling stories to get himself out this predicament.

Now when reading that it sounds intriguing, and I was really curious to see how this man used his storytelling ability to get out prison. What I got was a rambling tale that felt like it would never end. Seriously the pacing in this story was so slow, and it was just so convoluted, that it bogged the excitement down. The story focuses heavily on the political structure of the country that has Chant in prison, and I don't mind a good story with a political based theme, but good god was this just a drab and boring way to handle it. I hated everything about how this particular place was structured and trying to keep the characters (outside of Chant and his apprentice) straight was pretty much impossible they all felt the same with only minor changes. At one point I kept mixing up two of the ladies.

Honestly there was moments I tuned the audio book out, and I honestly don't feel like I missed anything important, so much of the story felt like pointless rambling. The stories that Chant and a few other characters tell within the story honestly weren't any better (yes there are stories within this story 16 of them to be exact), a few felt like they where connecting to what was currently going on but then others just felt like they where there to fill pages, I didn't understand how they connected to what was going on.

There was also this weird change in direction of how the story was being told, at some point around the 200 mark Chant started referring to a "You" person, as if he was talking directly to someone, and not just telling his story, as if I the reader was the person who he had been talking to the whole time, and now was the time to start actually referring to me. It was so weird and just built this wall of disconnect for me. Also the structure of the story was extremely frustrating, there are no chapter breaks, it just goes and goes and goes, which makes it very difficult to really figure out where a good stopping point is, so I was not happy about that.

Now the characters Chant and Ylfing are the only thing I did like about this book, their character building was actually really great and their dynamic was fun. The first introduction we got of Ylfing was through Chant telling us about him and it was honestly the funniest part of the story, considering there wasn't a lot a funny in this anyways. Chant had a sassy attitude while Ylfing was more sweet and tender, so their bickering was always good.

In the end you need to have a serious amount of patience to get through this book. I hate that the initial idea was so intriguing and yet here I am not liking the story, and I'm so disappointed I didn't like this more, I really wanted to. The execution just didn't work for me.