At least Half Wild was better than its prequel

 

So, unless a book in a series is truly awful, I’m the kind of person that is willing to power through – unless the series is more than three books. And I’ll be honestly, my response to Half Bad was lukewarm, I won’t lie, but here we are with the second of the three books Half Wild by Sally Green.

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This one picks up after the first one, shocking, I know, but the Blurbules of this one starts off by saying that Nathan Byrn is on the run. White Witches hunt him, black witches hate him. His gift from his murderous father is a wild new power he can’t control. He must find the girl he loves who may have betrayed him in a war between black and white witches with his loyalties split between both. The greatest danger Nathan faces might be himself. First of all, awful formatting on the physical version of the book, because that last sentence about how he might be the greatest danger, since there’s no punctuation, I thought that was part of the point before and it was just an incomplete sentence. Off to a great start.

However, I remember one of my gripes with the first book was the lack of feeling, and the fact the whole first book seemed to be setting up the action for this one. I’ll immediately say, this one gives off a more exciting vibe than the first one.

You know how TV shows will sometimes open an episode in one of the characters in this dire or dangerous situation, and then cut to a period of time earlier, that’s what the first chapter of this book felt like. Then chapter two comes around, and I don’t know what happened between Half Bad and now, but Nathan seems almost more like a person, like he has more of a personality that comes through in his thoughts. I will say, after giving it a quick think, I did wonder whether that had anything to do with him getting his Gift – his witch abilities. And since he got them, it’s like he’s coming into himself, almost. I just wish it hadn’t taken a whole book for him to get this way though. All of this came about from when he was thinking to himself that he only allows himself to think positive things, and he’s recounting to the reader why trees are a positive thing.

We learn that he often wakes up dirty or bloody, and that overnight he changes into an animal – the same Gift as his father.

Mercury has Annalise – the girl that Nathan likes. His friend, Gabriel, nearly died, and never came to meet him because when he nearly died, he was saved by this person, Van, and they’re holding him. But Nesbitt, this guy that finds Nathan in the forest, takes him to Van, and there is a little reunion, and in to put the reunion to one very specific thought, it felt very limp wrist. Or at least, that was the vibe I got. Nathan talks about Annalise a lot, but a lot of it is all just thoughts, whereas with Gabriel, it’s all very just there on the page, and it feels more real.

For a little bit on Van, the vibe I got was that she was this chain-smoking witch. I liked her. I don’t know why. It’s like on a season of Drag Race, and there’s always a competitor that I really like, but for no discernible reason why. Van was this for me. It might have something to do with the fact that at one point she offered a child a cigarette to try and make them feel better.

There were bits throughout the book where instead of having Nathan actually swear, it would just say, “I swear at…” I wasn’t the biggest fan of this. Unless this was done as a choice to have the book be able to be listed as for younger readers, I don’t know why it was done, because Nathan strikes me as this very gruff and harsh character, so having him swear would have made sense. There’s a bit, on page 354 that particularly stood out. There’s a bit of dialogue that’s literally just the word “shit”, but then a few lines it says, “Nesbitt swears at me.” And like… it was a little frustrating, either have the swearing or don’t.

There was a moment, on page 118, where we see the animal instinct take over Nathan for the first time. It gets told to us that it happens, but this was the first point it was shown, I think, and it was really interesting. The whole thing was lower case, but, and I don’t know why it reminded me of this, but it made me think of Lily from Fallout: New Vegas, who is this creature, a Nightkin, and she has this other part of her, Leo, which is like a super aggressive side to her. I don’t know, this bit just reminded me of that.

I don’t know if it was purposeful, but so much happens in this book, and it almost feels like it was making up for the lack of things that happened in the first book. Like, the first book is set only in a few different places, but this one, besties, we went all over the world.

There’s a moment, about 200-odd pages in, where Nathan says that he feels like he’s gained some control over his animal version of himself. I would have liked to have been able to see some more struggle over this, over him fighting with it. Not seeing this struggle and being given this line isn’t particularly a negative, more just an “Oh, okay, I guess.”

There’s also this war/revolt coming. Nathan, Gabriel, Nesbitt and Van are part of it. And it’s a thing that could change the way the world works. And I will say, because Nathan and the gang spend so much of the book running, I often forgot that there even was an overarching plot. Like, I forgot what they were doing sometimes.

There’s a moment when they’ve found Mercury, and Nathan says he’ll do anything for Annalise, and Mercury comments that true love is a powerful force. And, I don’t know, I just didn’t believe the love on Nathan’s end to be honest. He spent so long apart from her, to me, I got the impression that Nathan had made up this version of Annalise in his head about how things would be when they reunited. Saying that, however, when Nathan ends up kissing Gabriel while Annalise is still asleep… Biiiiitch, this is the good drama I was wanting – and also maybe the explanation for why Nathan sees Annalise this way. It’s the bisexuality mama.

The last quarter of the book sees things really ramp up. The AFW (Alliance of Free Witches – the bitches fighting against the council) is kicking up. Soul O’Brien, the man in charge of the council, has replaced the majority of the council with his own people. As the group is talking about the alliance, they say that they need Nathan’s father, Marcus, to join if they want to have any hope of other powerful witches to join them. And then they basically go on raids and attacks to take out their enemies.

And I’m putting this in its own paragraph, but the ending? The world screamed. I fell to the ground, and I was gooped. Like the ending, the last two chapters, this was the first part of the whole series that I had a full body reaction to. Like, it was wild, and so good.

As a final final thought, I still don't know how sold I am on fantasy, but this book was much better than its prequel, Half Bad.

Okay, bye!