The world is changing-the government has seized control of every aspect of society, and now kids are disappearing. For fifteen-year-old Wisty and her older brother Whit, life turns upside-down when they are hauled out of bed one night, separated from their parents, and thrown into a secret compound for no reason they can comprehend. The new government is clearly trying to suppress Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Being a Normal Teenager.
Imprisoned together and condemned to death, Wisty and Whit begin exhibiting strange abilities and powers they never dreamed of. Maybe there is a reason they were singled out. Can this newly discovered witch and a wizard master their skills in time to save themselves, their parents-and maybe the world?
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Even though this book is over 300 pages long, it is a REALLY short read. It takes me about 2 hours to commute home from work on Fridays, and I read almost the entire novel in about 1.5 of those commuting hours. I wasn’t in a quiet comfortable place, I was in the ferry station, then on the ferry, then on a train, and I still managed to fly through this novel. When I saw that I was getting through the novel so quickly, I thought that it was because it was a really great and addictive story. But the more I got into the book, the more I realized that that was not the truth.
Wisty and Whit are supposed to be normal teenagers in some version of modern America. Whit’s girlfriend had already disappeared when the story began, but this was the only thing that seemed off. All of a sudden, a new government appears, and children are being deemed as witches and wizards and are being carted off to prisons around the country.
Let me stop right there. How did we go from being in a regular version of the US with normal kids playing football and living a normal life to having a government that wanted to jail and kidnap kids? And overnight? It’s simply not possible for a government to be overturned overnight without some sort of terrible attack.
Then, Wisty and Whit get to prison, and some kids have already been there! Some kids have been in prison for months or years, and tell Wisty and Whit that there is no way out. If Wisty and Whit’s parents knew that they were magical beings, surely they would have found out through like some sort of magic network that kids were being snatched up by a new government and would have at least tried to hide their magical kids. It just doesn’t make sense that these kids have already been imprisoned for some time, but Wisty and Whit were out living their normal lives.
Then, there are even more discrepancies. Why were the citizens of the country so willing to allow this new government to come in and kidnap their neighbors and their children. Even the most hateful people would not believe on a snap judgment that their neighbors were all of a sudden evil people. The book doesn’t even give an explanation as to why the witches and wizards were being persecuted all of a sudden. Did a rogue witch or wizard attack people to make everyone become afraid and want to imprison them? So many questions and I don’t think that they will be answered in the next books.
The main conflict of the novel doesn’t make sense so I cannot say that this is a perfect book. Some parts of the story also seem really really rushed. But I do have to say that I love, love, LOVED the characters. Whit and his girlfriend Celia had such a tragically sweet relationship. Whit and Wisty did argue as normal brothers and sisters do, but they didn’t do anything to jeopardize their escape when it mattered. To be honest, they didn’t even really argue that much. Maybe once or twice that I noticed in the entire novel.
Also, there is more than one realm in this story. This made for really cool storytelling, as the characters began weaving between the realms. I can’t spoil too much, but the magic was awesome too when it does come into play.
Overall, I would still recommend this book. It was a fun read, and I enjoyed the characters. But if you wouldn’t be able to get past the fact that many things in the story have no logical explanation, then this might not be a book that you would enjoy.
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 books
