Title: Half Bad [Half Bad Trilogy 1]
Author: Sally Green
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Length: 380
Rating: 2 Star rounded down from 2.5
Description/Synopsis:
Wanted by no one.
Hunted by everyone.
Sixteen-year-old Nathan lives in a cage: beaten, shackled, trained to kill. In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most terrifying and violent witch, Marcus. Nathan’s only hope for survival is to escape his captors, track down Marcus, and receive the three gifts that will bring him into his own magical powers—before it’s too late. But how can Nathan find his father when there is no one safe to trust, not even family, not even the girl he loves?
Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
I am sure you can gather from the rating I gave this book that I didn’t like it. Books generally have to be pretty damn painful for me to rate them below a three star yet here we are. I present to you Half Bad.
This is a story set in our modern day world where there is a secret magic side to it where normal everyday people are generally unaware that its there. In this hidden magical world are the White/Good witches, Black/Evil witches, and some cross breeds between witches and humans and White and Black witches otherwise known as Half Codes. Our main character Nathan is a Half Code, and seemingly the only one they know about. His mother was a White witch with healing abilities and his father is the most wanted Black witch on the planet, responsible for killing many other witches, eating their hearts so that their powers became his own. The story is about Nathan’s struggles with being both kinds of witch, and how he is treated in his world.
This story had so much potential to be so good. There are just so many things you can do with a plot really that has the ability to go anywhere, and this story did have some really good bits. The very start and the very end of the story were great and I really enjoyed them. The rest of it was just so excruciatingly slow that at times I felt like my eyes were melting from their sockets. I really liked how the good/bad lines between the colours were blurred and came into question. I in general thought all the controlling government of the White witches were complete and utter f***heads (but I spose you can say that about lots of governments), while I didn’t really ever feel that kind of rage at any of the Black witches introduced in the book. His whole relationship with Celia was a tad confusing and I didn’t know how to take it. She kept him locked up like a dog and did horrible things to him but she didn’t want to hand him over when the people she worked for wanted to take him places for things unknown. The end of the book was also very exciting but for obvious reasons I wont go into it.
Other than that plot wise nothing really happened. Not at any point in this story was I worried about Nathan working out his big thing he needed to work out. If it happened it happened if it didn’t. All I knew was that it was going to take a bloody long time to get there. This book put me in a slump and send me to sleep.
With the writing style there were some bits of second person perspective, and it was only really in the very beginning of the book. It was very interesting thing to experience straight off the bat, it did not continue throughout the book so I find myself asking why. Why on earth was that in there, what purpose did it serve, just why? Commit to it, it was really interesting and I felt much more connected to the story when it was happening rather than when it wasn’t. The rest of the writing was very telly and not showy.
I didn’t mind the characters and one I did really liked was Arran and I feel so bad for Nathan that he has been separated from one of the only loving people in his sad life. Nathan himself wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t really care about him. I felt so sorry for everything he had to go through but I didn’t care if he died or anything. Spoiler I also felt for someone who was just so against killing the entire book he took to it just way to damn easy. What was the point of that struggle? End Spoiler. I also liked Gabriel and I am interested in seeing where his part of the story leads.
Now I did get sent the next book in the series by Penguin so I will be continuing on with it. I liked the ending of this book but I don’t know if it was enough to make me continue without having been sent the second one. I really hope we get more of the magical things in the second book and that the pace picks up throughout the whole plotline rather than the start and the end. At this point I am not recommending this series to anyone. I am holding judgment until after I have read the second book.
Till Next Time…
