2 stars
I’m starting to think Patterson’s writing just isn’t for me…
Either I have aged out of an appreciation for sarcastic teenage narration or Patterson and Charbonnet haven’t quite figured out how to write a sarcastic teen who doesn’t just annoy the reader the entire time. I wanted to like this book, but found myself alternating between bored, apathetic, and annoyed.
I’ll start by saying I loved the idea for this book. However, the execution just wasn’t there for me. The narration is split between Wisty and her brother, Whit. For me, this was unnecessarily confusing. The siblings are with each other the majority of the novel so they just trade off telling what’s happening. Their narration styles are so interchangeable that I often forgot who was supposed to be narrating. There’s a thin layer of Wisty as a trouble-maker and Whit as Mr. Perfect, but the way they talk and tell the story is very similar so the varying narrations didn’t really add anything to the story. Both narrators were equally annoying and I didn’t engage with either of them.
I did like that the chapters were very short which made it pretty quick reading. At the end is a section of “Excerpts of New Order Propaganda”, which lists books, music, museums, artists, and words banned by the New Order. It was interesting to figure out the real life equivalents to such entries as “The Thunder Stealer” and “Toasterface”.
Overall, this book felt like another The Angel Experiment, just with witches and wizards. I liked the idea but this book just wasn’t for me.
I don’t see myself continuing the series. I didn’t engage with the narration, which made it hard to care about what happened next. This one was just okay.