Book Review: Half Wild by Sally Green

YOU ARE PLOT DEVICE!!!!

After finally meeting his elusive father, Marcus, and receiving the three gifts that confirm him as a full adult witch, Nathan is still on the run. He needs to find his friend Gabriel and rescue Annalise, now a prisoner of the powerful Black witch Mercury. Most of all he needs to learn how to control his Gift - a strange, wild new power that threatens to overwhelm him. Meanwhile, Soul O'Brien has seized control of the Council of White Witches and is expanding his war against Black witches into Europe. In response, an unprecedented alliance has formed between Black and White witches determined to resist him. Drawn into the rebellion by the enigmatic Black witch Van Dal, Nathan finds himself fighting alongside both old friends and old enemies. But can all the rebels be trusted, or is Nathan walking into a trap? 

There are going to be spoilers for the first book in this reviews so you haven't read that and don't want to be spoiled. Leave now and go to my review of the first.

There is a love triangle in this book. Different in two aspects, the centre is a boy and we still have two boys. This isn't a real triangle (most ain't because for it to be a true triangle the other two would have to get on too inside the canon). One of the angles, is not really a character, she is a plot device. I can understand Nathan's attachment to Annalise because she was first person outside his family to be nice to him. But as a reader we know nothing about her, I have no attachment and even though Gabriel is over top with his attachment, we know him and care about him. Him in danger effects me. Annalise just doesn't feel like a character to me, she is a damsel in distress. Anything she does and has happen to her in this whole series just feels like plot, meaning having her as love interest is boring and pointless. She could just be a childhood friend and Nathan feels he owns her. In this book defense, a lot of books fallen into this trap of just telling us the characters love each other and give no reason why: No show, only Tell. There is a least a reason, this is just more annoying in this case because Pixie Dream Girls are annoying and everywhere. If we just had one personal info about her that didn't involve any other characters, maybe she be more like a person and less problematic.

We have more flashback in this, in fact we have flashbacks of after Nathan escaped. I found this to be weird. Like why didn't we hear about that then if it was so important, though the writer did say she should have planned more in acknowledgements and this is her debut series. Just a sentence instead of some of the flashbacks would have been fine.

This time big players are even. If have read my last review, I found the fact that the big players mostly being men unrealistic (and boring) when women tend to have more powerfully gifts and witches value that. That being said, wouldn't be cool to have a female villain that's just straight up evil. One can only dream (or get writing). One of the players doesn't make that much sense to me and I don't believe that this character would ever be given a role of that much power and don't feel I can say more without spoiling things. 

The ending feels a bit rushed. I think certain scenes were rushed over or skipped completely near the end that were important for the characters and their relationships with each other. I would have liked a bit more development with these.

Overall, I gave this five out of five stars for letters. I still like this series and I enjoyed this book better than the first one. I think the setup we had in the first plays off and now we only have to wait for the final part of the trilogy to find out this wrap up well and we get a satisfying ending. I will see you next March where I will tell you if I think it does. I'm guess it coming on the 27th.

I got this book for review off Netgalley and it's being published by Penguin on 26th March 2014.