AHHHHHH! WE HAVE A TITLE FOR THE SEQUEL! THE IRON FLOWER! ANNOUNCED ON HER TWITTER! 
 I went into this book ready with my highlighter to flag all the prejudice perpetuated stereotypes and ended up forgetting all about that and just really enjoying the book (read the 600 page beast in less than 24 hours). 
 Just to start this off...one of the open-minded professors ("good" and favourite teacher of Elloren) said this when Elloren asked if her clothes were made, essentially, by slave labour/sweat shops and he told her the truth: 
 "Don't thank me. Real education doesn't make your life easy. It complicates things and makes everything messy and disturbing. But the alternative, Elloren Gardner, is to live your life based on injustice and lies." 
 Well I'm apparently just opening myself up to "you're a racist" I guess since I absolutely loved this book. YES, it deals with controversial topics and does not give you a fairy tale ending conclusions to all of them...BECAUSE IT'S A SERIES AND NOT ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS REALLY HAVE SOLUTIONS! 
 1. If you have not read the book, get your damn rating OFF of GoodReads. You people are literally why I decided to read this because you are skewing the ratings of someone's work and influencing others whether or not to read it. 
 2. We cannot in YA bitch and BITCH AND BITCH that we want diversity and when someone writes characters that are prejudice, racist, homophobic, etc. and then scream bloody murder that the book promotes racism. Acknowleding and dealing with racism in a book does not mean the author is a part of the KKK and trying to promote segregation! Growth of the characters and people on any topic is how the world will become better (stop with the "I don't want to read about a racist person becoming unracist" because you are missing the point, a part of the problem and doing yourself a disfavour). 
 3. This book is LITERALLY colonial North American history with a sprinkle of President Donald Trump and magic. So many people are unaware of the horrible shit we did in USA and Canada during settlement and if it takes a fantasy novel like this for people to get upset then fine by me. I am so tired of reading horrible news but I need to stay aware of what is going on and taking these problems and placing them in a fantasy setting make them much easier to digest. 
 4. Everyone has prejudices (white, brown, black, etc.) that come from somewhere (normally older generations or from a lack of exposure) 
 5. Please stop pretending that people just flick their prejudices off and on like a light switch. There's so much institutional racism today in the world--I mean...in The Black Witch that we don't realize we've said something offensive or problematic until it comes out of our mouth or we think it. That's why Elloren does it. 
 The main character is raised by her sheltered but obviously feminist uncle who wants to protect her...then you meet her POS of an aunt (who is clearly a villain) along with some trashy other prejudice people from the city (also pretty obviously the villains). The ENTIRE book is Elloren being confronted with a prejudice her people have imposed (as well as the other races having their own prejudices) and then seeing that it's wrong...AND DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Elloren and her brothers are all very aware of this and join a freaking rebellion against Donald Trum--I mean...the racist, sexist, sociopathic government. Basically everyone on the "good" side is in an interracial friendship and/or romantic relationship and all the douches are...well very KKK-esk. 
 I am super excited to read the sequel(s?) and I really suggest actually reading the book and just ignoring the ratings since apparently GoodReads users are just blatenly misusing the site. 
 Please send all "you're a racist!" comments to biteme@gmail.com :) 
 ~~~~UPDATE FROM RE-READ~~~~ 
 I did a pretty long review of this before so I don't want to be repetitive. This book is just...I find it so incredibly ironic that people have judged this book so harshly when they have never read it. The original blogger that started the whole controversy has a right to her opinion and while I may not agree with it, she took the time to read the book and write out a long review. The people following her and then bullying others is ASTOUNDING and honestly...very disappointing for a community that screams for diversity and new kinds of books. The entire point of the book is to think for yourself and experience life and use those experiences to make your own opinions. How ironic that so many people would be angry about the book based on the opinion of someone else. 
 A final thought I was able to finally formulate was...some of the criticism about it was that the main character has those eureka moments about her prejudices and then continues to say or think questionable/problematic things. I think...we all would love for our prejudices to be turned off like a light switch but that's not how prejudices work. 
 This book is real. Like startling real and accurate for a fantasy. Maybe that is why people have a hard time with it. I keep coming back to this one thought. While I am happy to live outside of the United States, I remember maybe 10 years ago...the idea of having a President of the United States openly accept and work to legalize equal marriage was unimaginable. The majority of the people weren't with you. Now...in 2017...only 10 years later...it has totally flipped. While some of the older population may have died and the younger more liberal generation is now voting age, this swing in opinion required millions of people to change their stances. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we all grew up around institutional racism, sexism, homophobia and other isms. Pretending they don't exist and we don't conquer them seems so much more harmful to me.