Spoilery Book Reviews

Half Bad by Sally Green

Back of the book

Meet Nathan Bryn.

He's half white witch, half black witch.

His mother was a healer, his father is a killer.

He's been kept in a cage, since he was fourteen.

But if white witches are good and black witches are evil...what happens if you are both?

My thoughts

This book is edgy. The short starting chapters instantly pique interest, telling only half the story therefore sucking you in to find out more. The writing is simplistic but suits the story, especially since the main character and narrator Nathan is illiterate. The simplistic writing in no way indicates that it's written poorly, moreso seems a choice for the character tone, but perhaps also intended audience. The most interesting thing was the use of second person, which I can't recall coming across in any other books I've read. It doesn't stick with it for the whole story, which would either read horribly after a while or just be tuned out.

I love the main character, Nathan. He's just a kid growing up, facing all these external pressures telling him who he will be, when he really has no idea himself. I love the way his self-discovery is explored, and that continues in the following books although it's not such a focus point. The reader gets to see how Nathan is put into situations that make him act a certain way, but that doesn't make him a bad person. An example of this is robbing from people. Nathan constantly thinks about how he doesn't want to do it, but after being taken away from home, locked in a cage and now hunted by authorities for escaping, he's low on options if he wants to live past his seventeenth birthday.

I like that Nathan is a little bit of a villain, and that the book as a whole explores 'villainous' characters. Too often books have very clear-cut roles of who is good and bad (maybe one betrayal in the mix). The society says that white witches are good and black witches are bad however because Nathan is a mix his actions are scrutinised, and in turn we scrutinise the actions of the characters around him. This reveals how individuals actions in the situations they've been put in defines who is good and bad, not their ancestry. This book could be a comment on racism and socio-economic class but that's not how I read it because I'm not that much of a big brain.

In conclusion, I can't think of anything bad to say about this book. The plot and world was interesting to me, however mostly I was drawn in by Nathan himself. The simple writing fits the theme of the book and I like that Nathan is illiterate because too often main characters in books, love reading. Disproportionately so compared to the regular population I feel, however it mostly goes unnoticed because the people reading it, like reading, and see nothing strange about that. This book is edgy and gritty, and the series only gets better (and more heartbreaking!).

TL:DR

Edgy content, simplistic writing, captivating story and a character trying to understand right and wrong, finding himself in that spectrum.

**author note** the next few book reviews may be of lower quality because I lost motivation and then wrote reviews later after reading but once I catch up hopefully I can improve.