Witch & Wizard

I picked this series up when someone threw away a bunch of books (literally threw them away; I found them stacked around the dumpster). I am exceedingly glad that I did not pay money for this dreck, and can even understand why they were left to the elements rather than donated to the library or Goodwill.

I'm not the sort of reader who gets bogged down with technical details. If I've been sufficiently hooked by the narrative, a lot of times I won't even notice typos and grammatical errors unless they're really jarring, and I can deal with an odd writing style. Needless to say I was not hooked by the narrative.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why Patterson's chapters are so short. I don't see any type of logical or intuitive show more reason for the ending of most of the chapters, and I just keep wondering why the hell there isn't a regular page break. The opening of the book, when Whit and Whisty are arrested, takes up ten chapters, each averaging about a page and a half. It would be one thing if he was alternating points-of-view, but he isn't; there might be three chapters of Whisty's narration, followed by two of Whit's.

Which leads me to the fact that a lot of times I forgot who was the current narrarator; Whit and Whisty are basically interchangable, as well as monumentally stupid. It really should not take anyone as long it did these two to realize that yes, they really are a witch and wizard. When you can spontaneously burst into flame and yet remain unharmed, levitate, stop objects being thrown at you in midair--how dumb do you have to be? And how stupid were their parents for not telling them what they were and training them how to use their powers?

The dialogue was frequently either stilted or way too wordy for the current situation, or to have come from the mouths of modern day teenagers:

...Then I heard Whit shouting as he was thrown onto the living room floor next to me.

"Whit, what's going on? Who are these...monsters?"

"Wisty," he gasped, cohently enough. "You okay?"

I'm really not sure why Whisty would think her brother would have any more of a clue what was going on than she did, not to mention the situation calls for a much stronger epithet than "monsters", just in my opinion.

* * *

"The soldiers, all in black, their boots spit-shined, came for us that morning in the prison..."

People just don't talk like that, particularly not teenagers. Who would even think to come up with "spit-shined" as a descriptor, much less bother describing their captors' boots in any sort of detail?

The One Who Is The One was just laughable. Not even in an over-the-top stereotype way, he just seemed completely ineffectual and childish and not scary, at all. Nothing in this book seemed especially believable; I only made it to chapter 76--which starts on page 201, incidentally--before giving this book up as a waste of time.

I am baffled that this is a bestseller. I suppose it just goes to show that there really is no accounting for taste.

Thus endeth my excursion into the world of YA fiction. show less

Will rank as one of the worst books I've ever read.

It's just so bad I can't get my head around it. It reads like a unimaginative first draft of some crappy short story. Let's start with the dull as mud title. Way to take mysticism out of magic. And the lead characters, brother and sister duo Whit and Wisty, I cannot fathom how much I hate them.

Wisty (Wisteria, which is the street those decrepit Desperate Housewives lived on, isn't it?) is obnoxious, painfully stupid, ignorant, dumb and unlikeable. Whit is somewhat better, only because he doesn't flaunt suddenly acquired magical powers with as much ease and control as his sister.

Wisty is also references as around sixteen years old, she reads like an eight year old. This is the second show more James Patterson novel I have read and from these two novels - the man cannot write women as anything other than giggly, fainting, crying, waifs who need a guy around to do the important stuff.

The novel starts weird. All of a sudden, weird guards burst into the Allgood family home and capture the bro/sis duo and tell them they're a witch and wizard respectively. They have no idea why they're being told this, it's all so shocking. Then they're in prison where they are being tortured, starved and mistreated but none of it has any lasting impact and Wisty discovers she can explode into flames at will and turn people into weasels.

The ghost of Whit's missing ex-girlfrield shows up, takes the duo through the Shadowland (some sort of ghost astral plane) through a portal to another place where other accused witches and wizards (none of whom have an ounce of the magic that the Duo have, btw) are camping out.

The duo want to find their parents, the current leader of this new group (they swap out leaders every week for some reason) tells them they'll find their parents at a prison that they're going to break into to rescue all the prisoners.

Having no knowledge of her magic a week or so before, and claiming to have no control over it, Wisty decides the best idea is to turn herself into a mouse to sneak into the prison. She does this effortlessly. She keeps referring to herself as a "bad witch" as if its some sort of cool label. Gr, this girl is an idiot.

There is NO drama. It's just words on paper. Words that I understand in as much as they are in English; but there is no story. There is no life in the narrative. There is no richness to the characters. There's no urgency, there's no action, there's definitely no humour as much as James Patterson attempts to thrump it in your face again&again&again.

It's just a pointless book. James Patterson has written a gajillion novels, and I'm starting to think he has a list of book genres he wants to write and just checks them off when he churns them out. And now he can cross off crappy YA fantasy.

He clearly "drew inspiration" from much better novels. Wisty (ugh, I can barely bring myself to write her name) and Whit literally have to run through a brick wall to get to the Shadowland. Not on a train platform, mind, but a speedy killer train comes up soon enough. Wisty literally becomes a girl on fire. There's a talking companion, a bunch of kids trying to stick it to the man, evil grownups in charge, etc.

The only redeeming quality this book has is that it's such a thin story you definitely don't get invested and it doesn't take up a lot of time. I finished in two hours. Now it goes away never to be read again. And I've learned my lesson, two James Patterson books that have sucked - I won't read him again. show less

At the risk of sounding overly critical, this book was absolutely terrible. I guess the premise was interesting enough and the message wasn't too bad (though extremely trite). But the writing was just God-awful.

I mean, yeah, the voices of the narrators were pretty juvenile, but maybe that's to be expected in YA. But it wasn't just that. It was jarringly inconsistent. There's a reason you don't expect the words "alabaster" and "barf" to occur in the same sentence. (Yes, this really happened!)

It wasn't just the tone, though, it was the story too. I felt like this book made a habit of insulting my intelligence. Or since it's YA, I guess... the intelligence of 12- to 18-year-olds? But what do I know? There must be a reason James Patterson show more sells. I'll have to check out one of his other books, I suppose.

But not before I recover from this one. show less

I really haven't read any good reviews about this book (seriously, look it up on Goodreads and almost every single review on the first page has rated it as one star) and I don't understand why it has been rated so poorly. A lot of the reviews say that it was a blatant rip-off of "Harry Potter" and all I can think is, "Did we read the same book?" How are they so similar? Because they are about witches, wizards, and prophecies? Do you know how many books revolve around those themes? A lot. I don't think that it is fair to say that this book is a rip-off by any means, the differences far outweigh the similarities in this instance. I thought that it had an interesting plot line and it was very fast paced/ action-packed and by now it has show more probably become more than a little bit apparent that I prefer when books have a little romance aspect to them, but despite this book not having really any romance to it I personally still really liked it.

I think that the main reason why I liked this book was because of (in addition to the interesting plot line, that is) Whit and Wisty. Despite all of their hardships they were really quite funny characters. I lost track of the number of times I burst out laughing at their antics, like when Wisty was learning the extent of her abilities and yelled "Ooh, I'm a bad scary witch," I said in a psycho kind of voice. I'm going to turn you into a pumpkin. Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!" (pg.117) and accidentally turned another character in the book into an animal. And I think that the both of them were just really sweet, they obviously cared a lot about one another and it was nice to see their brother/ sister bond grow throughout the book. Furthermore, I love seeing kids develop their powers over the course of a book and there was a lot of that going on in this book, from learning how to make horseflies and leeches appear out of thin air to bursting into flames to shooting lightening out of their hands.

All in all? I do think that this is a really great book. While it is mostly serious with all of the action and adventure there is most definitely a comedic aspect to it that it genuinely funny and that does help break up some of its seriousness. I am looking forward to seeing its film adaptation (my copy of the book contained a special preview of the movie screenplay and it sounded pretty awesome). show less

This book reads very juvenile for a young adult book. There is no world building, the characters are not realistic, and the dialogue between characters is just absurd. The expressions these teens use sounds like things my mother would say like bejeezus or joe schmoe and many more. I also can't believe a teenager would wake up one morning and ALL OF A SUDDEN an evil dictorial leader has taken over the world and is arresting children. I also can't believe that two teens who are a witch and a wizard can just will themselves to do magic by THINKING REAL HARD and not really knowing any magic. It just seems like lazy writing.

Okay, now the audio. I love audio books, but this was just ridiculous. What voice actor do you cast to voice a 6 ft 2 show more football player...why not the weakest male in acting, Frodo AKA Elijah Wood. It was just so hard to picture this character hearing Frodo throughout the story. I also hated all the background noises when something kind of important happened, like the sound of a helicopter, sirens, and dreaded situations approaching. It is really hard to concentrate on the narrator when you're listening to a helicopter. Also while driving I thought there was an ambulance behind me, only to freak out and realize it was the book. Just awful.

If you enjoy reading avoid this book. If I was a teen who wasn't a big reader and wanted to give a book a try by a popular author (like James Patterson) this book would leave me not wanting to read ever again. show less

A dystopian fantasy . Teenagers Wisty and her older brother Whit live in a politically corrupt alternate world. The New Order police arrest the siblings for the possession of supernatural powers, but Wisty and Whit have no inkling that they possess supernatural powers. After their arrest they suddenly discover their powers and that they are a witch and a wizard. They escape from jail, join a highly improbable resistance, and spend the rest of the story on the run. The story (let’s just be clear, there is none) jumps from one unexplained action and character to another, and has no resolution. “Chapters” are 2 pages long, and alternate between Whit and Wisty. This is a book adrift without a rudder; no one knows what is going on, show more including the reader. Hop aboard for a jumbled, chopped up, bumpy - who cares action ride with blinders on. Awful! Unfortunately, if you purchase books for a library, you will probably have to purchase this because of the Patterson hype machine. show less

This is quite possibly the worst book I have ever read. The plot is nonsensical, the characters are tepid, and the writing style would fail a 6th-grade English class. I forced myself to read until Chapter 67, and then I just couldn't take any more.

This was the first James Patterson book I've tried to read, and if his other books are anything like this one, I boggle at how this author is a bestseller. I could write a more in-depth review, but the thought of giving more time towards thinking about this curdled wretch of a book makes my stomach turn.

Please save your money and do not buy this book. Or if you must, buy a book of matches with it so that you can burn it.

I'm actually ashamed to have this in my book list.