Half Bad by Sally Green
May. 16th, 2014 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
You can’t read, can’t write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.
You get sick if you stay indoors after dark.
You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.
You’ve been kept in a cage since you were fourteen.
All you’ve got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys.
And do that before your seventeenth birthday.
Easy.
14-year-old Nathan is a Half Code. His mother was a White Witch with a Gift for healing and his father, Marcus, a notorious Black Witch who kills other witches to eat their hearts in order to take their Gifts. He lives with his grandmother, an elder half-brother and two elder half-sisters and spent his life subject to the increasingly hard line Notifications of the Council of White Witches who are afraid of what he will become on his 17th birthday (when witches usually go through a ceremony that activates their Gift).
On Nathan’s 14th birthday, the Council take him away from his family and into the ‘care’ of Celia, a former hunter, who takes over his education. Kept in a cage, chained and brutalised, Nathan learns that the Council has plans for him. His only hope is to escape and find a Black Witch called Mercury who can give him the answers he needs but who’s also rumoured to kill and eat boys …
Sally Green’s debut YA fantasy (the first in a trilogy) is a book of two halves. Nathan is as an emotionally complicated character - aware of how he’s regarded by the Council and other White Witches and his powerlessness to stop it, he loves his grandmother and brother but fantasises about the father he’s never met. Unfortunately the world he exists in lacks sophistication – the White Witches are cruel and violent and the Black Witches cruel and self-serving. I wanted shades of grey or at least some hint that there are White Witches uncomfortable with their Council’s decisions. Many of the supporting characters lack depth with the villains defined by their willingness to use torture. Annalise is a love interest whose relationship with Nathan revolves around physical attraction but who lacks personality and I didn’t understand how she could rise above her family’s hatred of Black Witches while Gabriel is little more than a third point in the obligatory YA love triangle. I loved the way Green integrates Nathan’s backstory into the novel and Nathan’s connection with nature and his love of drawing is excellently conveyed but once he escapes little seems to happen other than that he runs around and asks questions without getting any answers. Ultimately, although I can see why this book’s got so much attention and I would check out the sequel, it wouldn’t be high on my priority list.
The Verdict:
Sally Green’s debut YA fantasy (the first in a trilogy) is a book of two halves. Nathan is as an emotionally complicated character - aware of how he’s regarded by the Council and other White Witches and his powerlessness to stop it, he loves his grandmother and brother but fantasises about the father he’s never met. Unfortunately the world he exists in lacks sophistication – the White Witches are cruel and violent and the Black Witches cruel and self-serving. I wanted shades of grey or at least some hint that there are White Witches uncomfortable with their Council’s decisions. Many of the supporting characters lack depth with the villains defined by their willingness to use torture. Annalise is a love interest whose relationship with Nathan revolves around physical attraction but who lacks personality and I didn’t understand how she could rise above her family’s hatred of Black Witches while Gabriel is little more than a third point in the obligatory YA love triangle. I loved the way Green integrates Nathan’s backstory into the novel and Nathan’s connection with nature and his love of drawing is excellently conveyed but once he escapes little seems to happen other than that he runs around and asks questions without getting any answers. Ultimately, although I can see why this book’s got so much attention and I would check out the sequel, it wouldn’t be high on my priority list.
You can’t read, can’t write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.
You get sick if you stay indoors after dark.
You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.
You’ve been kept in a cage since you were fourteen.
All you’ve got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys.
And do that before your seventeenth birthday.
Easy.
14-year-old Nathan is a Half Code. His mother was a White Witch with a Gift for healing and his father, Marcus, a notorious Black Witch who kills other witches to eat their hearts in order to take their Gifts. He lives with his grandmother, an elder half-brother and two elder half-sisters and spent his life subject to the increasingly hard line Notifications of the Council of White Witches who are afraid of what he will become on his 17th birthday (when witches usually go through a ceremony that activates their Gift).
On Nathan’s 14th birthday, the Council take him away from his family and into the ‘care’ of Celia, a former hunter, who takes over his education. Kept in a cage, chained and brutalised, Nathan learns that the Council has plans for him. His only hope is to escape and find a Black Witch called Mercury who can give him the answers he needs but who’s also rumoured to kill and eat boys …
Sally Green’s debut YA fantasy (the first in a trilogy) is a book of two halves. Nathan is as an emotionally complicated character - aware of how he’s regarded by the Council and other White Witches and his powerlessness to stop it, he loves his grandmother and brother but fantasises about the father he’s never met. Unfortunately the world he exists in lacks sophistication – the White Witches are cruel and violent and the Black Witches cruel and self-serving. I wanted shades of grey or at least some hint that there are White Witches uncomfortable with their Council’s decisions. Many of the supporting characters lack depth with the villains defined by their willingness to use torture. Annalise is a love interest whose relationship with Nathan revolves around physical attraction but who lacks personality and I didn’t understand how she could rise above her family’s hatred of Black Witches while Gabriel is little more than a third point in the obligatory YA love triangle. I loved the way Green integrates Nathan’s backstory into the novel and Nathan’s connection with nature and his love of drawing is excellently conveyed but once he escapes little seems to happen other than that he runs around and asks questions without getting any answers. Ultimately, although I can see why this book’s got so much attention and I would check out the sequel, it wouldn’t be high on my priority list.
The Verdict:
Sally Green’s debut YA fantasy (the first in a trilogy) is a book of two halves. Nathan is as an emotionally complicated character - aware of how he’s regarded by the Council and other White Witches and his powerlessness to stop it, he loves his grandmother and brother but fantasises about the father he’s never met. Unfortunately the world he exists in lacks sophistication – the White Witches are cruel and violent and the Black Witches cruel and self-serving. I wanted shades of grey or at least some hint that there are White Witches uncomfortable with their Council’s decisions. Many of the supporting characters lack depth with the villains defined by their willingness to use torture. Annalise is a love interest whose relationship with Nathan revolves around physical attraction but who lacks personality and I didn’t understand how she could rise above her family’s hatred of Black Witches while Gabriel is little more than a third point in the obligatory YA love triangle. I loved the way Green integrates Nathan’s backstory into the novel and Nathan’s connection with nature and his love of drawing is excellently conveyed but once he escapes little seems to happen other than that he runs around and asks questions without getting any answers. Ultimately, although I can see why this book’s got so much attention and I would check out the sequel, it wouldn’t be high on my priority list.
