Thought Train to Pusan

--> I first read Sally Green’s Half Bad Trilogy of YA novels (including Half Bad , Half Wild , and Half Lost ) two years ago, and at the time I really enjoyed it. But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about these YA novels that involve young people standing up to injustices or find themselves fighting for something greater than themselves, what with everything going on in our world today: in this case it’s not per say exclusively the young people who are fighting, but they are the majority, as it is they who are facing a whole life of nothing but more and more injustice to come, and those who are able to bring in a new generation with new ideas. The Half Bad Trilogy focuses on a society of witches that blends in with the regular world (“fains” as humans are called), but there is a council of “White Witches” that govern activity and search to hunt and kill all the “Black Witches” within the UK. In other regions of Europe, the White and Black witches basically just l...

Half Bad. Half Wild. Half Lost. It sets itself up to follow the usual young adult series storyline, yet there was something really intriguing about this series to me, and I absolutely devoured all three of the books as fast as possible. It might be that I’ve never really experienced the mythology of witches presented quite in the way this book does, which made it interesting to me. There is also such a survival instinct present in these books, and a connection to nature that is really beautiful, particularly in relation to the protagonist and his father. I also appreciate how a lot of young adult books nowadays don't feel the need to shy away from serious topics or from things that are a little grim. Of course, that's not for everyone, and despite there being quite a bit of violence in these novels, I found that it worked well with the tone of the story and the themes present. Also, I think it was very much a stylistic choice of Sally Green to describe things in enough...