Green, Sally.  Half Bad.  New York: Viking, 2014.  978-0-670-01678-5.  394p.  $18.99.  Gr. 9-12.

Half Bad is the first volume in a trilogy about witches in contemporary England.  Witches and humans, or fain, coexist in this world.  At the same time, white (good) witches are engaged in a war to rid the world of black witches.  Sometimes, it is difficult to tell who is good and who is evil in this strange world.  Nathan is a “half code”, the illegitimate son of a white witch and the most evil of black witches, Marcus.  White and black witches both want to use Nathan as a tool to find and murder his notorious father.  When the story opens, Nathan is being held prisoner in an outdoor cage and is subjected to starvation and beatings.  He does receive some formal schooling in his youth and during that time he meets and falls in love with Annalise, a neighbor who is a member of a prominent family of white witches.  Annalise has a minor role in most of this novel.  She does reappear toward the end of the book, which hints at a larger role for her in the promised sequel, Half Wild.

Nathan’s goal in Half Bad is to escape from his captors and find his father.  It is literally a matter of life and death for him; he must receive three “gifts” in order to come of age as a witch.  If he does not receive the gifts, he will die.  Nathan eventually escape, and with the help of many witches and fain, makes the journey to find Marcus.

Fantasy         Susan Fox, Washington Jr/Sr High School

I was not as enthralled with this novel as much as my students.  They view Nathan as a tragic and romantic hero.  The book is grim, and I wouldn’t recommend it to young or sensitive students. Nathan is subjected to horrible torture and mental abuse.  The action in the book is somewhat confusing toward the end.  There are many new characters to keep track of throughout.  How many of them will make an appearance in the second book?  What will Annalise’s role be in the second book?  I felt that this novel barely began to set the stage for the coming books in the series.  The one interesting aspect of this book is that (much like the Harry Potter series) it seems to be examining good / evil and the role of prejudice in our world.  The white witches often seem to be more evil than the black witches.  Has their power corrupted them, and is the prejudice against black witches totally justified?  Half Bad provides the potential for many interesting discussions.