Well it's over (Half Lost review)

 

Well, I’m onto the final book of the Half… trilogy by Sally Green. This one is Half Lost. As a very quick recap on my thoughts of the last two books. Half Bad was lukewarm at best, Half Wild was much better, and the ending of it was, I would say, a complete slay. So, before I started this final book, I did hope that this book would keep up with the slayification that the end of the second book did, and this post will talk about whether it in fact did or not. And also, I may include spoilers for the other two books in this post.

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But first, our blurb. It starts off by saying that Nathan Byrn is still on the run. White witch hunters are on the offensive and no black witch is safe. Nathan is more powerful than ever, but on the brink of losing his mind. To defend the alliance, he must become its ultimate weapon. And to save a society that hates him, he must risk losing all that he loves. Now, from the end of the second book, I already knew that Annalise, the girl that Nathan was into, was mad at Nathan for killing her brother and not telling her about it. And then he sort of, but also sort of not, had this thing with Gabriel.

This binch starts some months after the last book, after the battle that both killed Marcus and a bunch of the members of the alliance. Nathan is big mad at Annalise, because he’s thinking about her and that everyone is dead, and everything happened because of her. Mr Man can also go invisible, shoot lightning from his hands and breathe weak fire now, which is fun. He’s getting all his father’s Gifts.

That thing I complained about in the last book, about how selective the swearing is. Like there’ll be points where Nathan, or other characters, will actually swear, and we’ll see the swearing on the page. Then there are other times when Nathan is thinking and it’ll just say, “I swear at” and whoever he swears at. And I guess now I’ve read this final book, I could sort of understand it in the other books, but it seems like Nathan is giving in to fate and his gifts and becoming more of this creature or monster. And it seems like it would make more sense for him to just swear. There’s a point on page 42 where he’s cleaning the Fairborn – a legendary knife he has – where he mentions “swearing helps” when he’s frustrated about the situation. So, I was like, “Okay? Let us see or hear the swearing then if it helps.” But I will say, to play the other side of this point. In this moment, specifically, since he is looking for Annalise to get revenge, and the prisoner he’s found isn’t Annalise, maybe that was the point in not showing us the swearing. It was supposed to be stifling and frustrating.

It seems like part of Nathan’s character throughout this whole series is that since he’s half black and white, he’s wrestling with being both good and evil. Like, he does good things, in this final book, he rescues a prisoner the Hunters had, but he straight up murdered all the Hunters and when he’s talking to the prisoner, it’s mentioned that being evil and nasty is essentially something natural to him. Now, I’m fully aware that evil protagonists are a thing, but for them to be compelling, they have to have something to humanise them, and the problem I had with Nathan was that, and maybe this was the evil side, he just had no remorse for the bad things he was doing until after he’d done them. And maybe I’d be more invested in his journey if I just liked him as a character… And I don’t know that I did, to be honest. There’s one point where Gabriel literally says he’s getting tired of Nathan because of what he's becoming… Girl, same – simply because I felt like I was seeing so much more of the evil side of him.

But the two of them end up arguing and making up, and one of the chapters ends with Nathan thinking how he never wants to hurt Gabriel again. Although, this whole time, Nathan has been having visions/dreams with Gabriel trying to lead him somewhere. So, I assumed, with that and the end of that chapter, he was going to hurt Gabriel somehow, or, with how liberal this series was with killing people, Nathan would kill Gabriel – or be the reason he dies. They also kept saying to one another that they’d never leave the other as the book went on, so clearly this was meant to be setup.

Still the story continues, more people die, and leave, the group that Nathan and Gabriel are in until it gets to be just the two of them, when they’re on the search for this witch, Ledger. And something I’ll say. I know the majority of this post has been complaining about Nathan as a character, and not talking about the story, but this is my post, so you’ll have to put up with it. I liked Nathan better when it was just him and Gabriel. Like Gabriel seemed to be the one who brought out the positives in Nathan and humanised him – even though I knew in my heart it wasn’t going to last. Also, there’s one part where Nathan mentions that he loves Gabriel more than he’s loved anyone, and, I don’t know, maybe it was because Nathan was this harsh, gruff character the whole time, I was just kind like, “That’s nice…”

Nathan meets Ledger, some of these witches got dumb names, and talks to him about balance and harmony, something that clearly Nathan struggles with. Oh, and I suppose I should mention, this part of the story/quest is that Nathan is basically trying to get two halves of this amulet together because it contains great power. Ledger ends a chapter saying this magic is pretty much, “The Essence of it all. The Essence of us all.” The Jaida Essence of Hall. But also basically, it’s the source of power that all witches have access to.

One minor thing I wasn’t a fan of was this series’ use of contractions. Like they clearly picked and chosen when they were used, but because of that, there were times when bits of the books read a little funny. One instance was on page 232 of this last book. It says, “I’m risking it all. And yet I feel confident about the attack. I am invulnerable after all.” I’m sure there are people that have no problem with this. But I think, for me, since both “I am” and “I’m” were used so close together, it ended up coming off a little weird when I read it.

Anyway… the ending… I’m going to explicitly put a spoiler warning here as I’m about to talk about the ending. So… Bury your gays is such a fucking tired trope. Even back in 2016 when this book was published. In the final battle Gabriel was the only one who died – out of the main characters. All the straight characters (and Nathan – bi/queer) lived. But the only one that died was gay. And for what? For the clicks, views and engagement. And I have to say, this book certainly didn’t get them from me. I wouldn’t have been so bothered if other main characters had died, instead of just the gay character. If other characters had died, it wouldn’t specifically have fed into the bury your gays trope. But since it did, serious Floptina Aguilera moment. And I feel like Gabriel’s death would have hit harder had Nathan had the capability of feeling normally. Anyway, spoilers for the ending finish here.

So, yes. That was the Half Whatever trilogy by Sally Green. First book, lukewarm. Second book, a slay, I admit. Third book, a flop that played into one of, if not, my least favourite literary tropes – bury your gays. Everyone talks about LGBT rights, but not about LGBT wrongs. This trope is one such wrong. Safe to say I will not be returning to these books and will likely either donate them to my local library or a friend who I know love witches and witchcraft… Also I do feel a little bad because I started reading this series after a recommendation from a friend. But, hey! Here's a wild concept, different people have different tastes.

Also, what’s wild is that an Instagram accounted commented on my Half Wild post (on Instagram obviously) about how this series is getting turned into a Netflix series, and that I should “be sure to check it out.” I will not be doing that, thank you.

I just hope that whatever I read next is… better.

Okay, bye!