Review: Half Bad (S. Green)
Title: Half Bad
Author: Sally Green
Rating: 3/5 Stars
Series: The Half Bad Trilogy (Book 1)
Why?: Impulse grab
This was one of those books that left me feeling extremely confused concerning my true feelings towards its existence. On one hand, the story was pretty engaging, and it was really interesting to learn about the different social stratifications and how society worked. On the other hand, it was written in first person (I am NOT a first person kind of reader), and once I finished this one although I had the next two sitting in a neat stack on my desk I felt no overwhelming desire to pick up the next one and read. Yes, there were cliffhangers and yes, I was slightly curious to see what happened next, but not enough to read it instead of Warcross. Hence why it left me very confused, since I didn't love it, yet I didn't hate it.
The story itself was pretty interesting. Nathan, the main character, is half White Witch and half Black Witch, which causes the council to make up all of these rules in order to monitor his movements (also, was super unclear if he was the ONLY "half-code," or just the only one mentioned?) since his dad is a super powerful Black Witch that they are trying to catch. His childhood was honestly awful, because people couldn't see past the fact that he was half Black Witch, and attacked him just for that. And don't even get me started on Jessica, she was one of those people who was mean because being mean was fun and it was just so irritating. Like find a new hobby Jessica.
The book basically follows the story of how Nathan came to be in the cage, including all of the different things that the council tried to do to him, and the different ways in which he was mistreated. It alternates between talking about the past and talking about the present, which was slightly confusing but otherwise was okay with me. Personally I thought that the times he talked about his childhood were almost easier to follow than when he was talking about what was going on presently, but I think the constant shift between the times was what caused that confusion.
My main complaints about this book were that it was slightly slow, slightly confusing, and not super engaging. I really struggled to get into the book just because there were too many things that I had to try and figure out at once, when I would rather that the confusion was minimal. Overall it was pretty good, but I'm not sure I will ever finish the series.