Half Bad is now a book I have definitely read...

 

The rumours are true, I’m not the biggest fan of fantasy, unless we’re talking about the Chloe MK EP, or the video game genre, so me reading the fantasy book Half Bad by Sally Green is quite the rarity. This book came to me as a recommendation from a friend, and I had a gift card to a major UK book retailer, so I was like, “Wig, okay. Let’s get it.” And here we are, you’re welcome for the following mess. I will say, this post is going to be very disjoined, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

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Now, this book doesn’t so much have a blurb as it does a few lines that set up the premise of the book by introducing us to the protagonist, Nathan Byrn. It says, “He’s half white witch, half black witch. His mother was a healer, his father 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?” So, that set me up thinking that Nathan was going to be giving very much Britney Spears perfume ad: Making your own destiny. Also, it was released in 2014, so there’s been enough time that I’m not too bothered about giving minor spoilers.

Half Bad is a series of three. The other two are Half Wild and Half Lost. I mentioned this in a previous post, not sure which one, but I know I’ve written it here before, that I prefer books to be a singular standalone thing. By the time this post goes live, I’ll be part way through, or maybe even done with, the second book. And so far I have realised this is a story that’s told over multiple books.

The first thing I want to mention is how short the “chapters” (they’re not listed as chapters, but besties, they’re chapters) are. Rarely did they go on for that long in this book, so as I read, I felt like I was zooming through it, even when I wasn’t. And, honestly, I loved that. I’m a slow reader as it is, not in a struggle way, but in a I just read slowly way. When it comes to books that have chapters that go on and on, I find myself getting bored easier. So I did very much appreciate the short ones in this bitch. And I think the whole long chapters thing is something that often puts me off fantasy as a genre. Often, fantasy is, for lack of a better word, bloated, but it sort of has to be for all the world building and introducing the reader to the rules of this world different from our own. But since this has elements of reality intertwined, it managed to avoid that bloating. As an addendum to this, throughout this book, Nathan is a literal child, so I did wonder if maybe because we’re seeing the world through a child’s eyes had something to do with that.

So, this book starts off in the second person, with Nathan trapped in the cage that the blurb mentioned. I haven’t really read much that is in the second person. But the thing was, after the first little section of Nathan being trapped in the cage, the book then travels back to Nathan’s childhood, and it switches to first person, then goes back second for like one chapter. So, to be completely honest, I’m not even sure the book needed the second person section. I did think it was perhaps to make the moments where he was caged up so much worse, since it’s referring to “you”, so you’re almost forced into his position.

Anyway, we find out that Nathan wasn’t wanted as a baby, and then his mother eventually k-words herself. That’s fun. And in this world, witches just exist, although they do have to blend in with normal, non-magic people – the fain – and when witches turn 17, they have this ceremony called a Giving, where they receive three gifts, and from then, they find out their Gift – their power. For example, Nathan’s grandmother, her Gift is potion-making. When Nathan is eight, he goes for this assessment, that I think was to try and determine what kind of witch he was going to grow up to be – a black or white witch.

As Nathan grows up, he very much was not loved by many people, and struggles with simple things, like reading, writing and maths in school. There’s this moment when he’s in high school where people say he’s dirty, and his response is that he spends a lot of time in the woods, and it’s hard to keep clean in there, and you know what? He’s right. If he likes hanging out in the woods, he’s not going to keep clean, and he should say it.

Then there’s this other family of witches in his high school, the O’Briens, and Nathan is told to stay away from them, so obviously he gets into a lot of shit with them because there wouldn’t be conflict in this book if he didn’t. One of the O’Briens, Annalise, she takes an interest in him, and they become friends as well as sort-of-lovers-but-also-not-really, and since her brothers are so violently against Nathan, he ends up getting beaten up and tortured, which is an accurate description for what happens, by them.

And then after the first third of the book, we get back to the cage section that the book opened with, and it gets so dreary. But not dreary as in dull, boring. Dreary because it’s meant to be dreary, Nathan is literally locked up, so obviously it’s not going to be nice and vibrant. His life is literally as a prisoner. He then spends the second third of the book locked up still, but only it seems a little more serious. By the final third he’s not, but still…

This whole book felt like the prequel to another book. You know how with certain series, a prequel will get released once the final book is out? This book felt like reading one of those prequels, despite it being the first book in the series. I don’t know, it was odd, and some of the things that I was reading just didn’t feel right. And I mean that in the sense that it, weirdly, felt like I was reading the series out of order.

My friend that recommended me this book did tell me the direction that the series goes, so, even after reading this one, I’m going to keep reading, even if it hasn’t been my favourite book.

As for why I didn’t really enjoy it that much: I would have liked the story to pick up faster than it did. And I realise that since it is only the first book of a trilogy, it’s going to be like that, but still… Additionally, even when things finally did start happening, because Nathan is the way he is, like, he didn’t develop properly while growing up, because of that, it sort of feels like the things that happen just happen. I know that’s a dumb statement, but I mean it in the way that it often felt like the events didn’t matter all that much.

But the thing is, I can’t tell whether this was all done as an intentional choice or not, because Nathan was raised not having a lot of love, or expression, so it makes sense that he’s like that, but is that an excuse as to why the world seems bland before Nathan had his own Giving ceremony? To keep on this point, since the world seemed bland, when the more important things happened, like when it came to his budding relationship with this other character, Gabriel, because there was this lack of feeling in the world, I kind of didn’t care. And it was the same for when, and this is going to be a spoiler, Rose died. Like, I felt nothing for her. Sorry to this Rose. The spoiler ends here.

Something I did notice, since I’m writing this having read a little bit of the second book. After Nathan receives his Gift, everything intensifies, and the whole thing seems a less bland. So, did I particularly enjoy Half Bad? Not really, but Half Wild (so far) is looking better. Stay tuned, I guess lol.

Okay, bye!