Whit and Wisty Allgood have sacrificed everything to lead the resistance against the merciless totalitarian regime that governs their world. Its supreme leader, The One Who Is The One, has banned everything they hold dear: books, music, art, and imagination. But the growing strength of the siblings' magic hasn't been enough to stop the One's evil rampage, and now he's executed the only family they had left.
YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FIND ONE HERE.
Wisty knows that the time has finally come for her to face The One. But her fight and her fire only channel more power to this already invincible being. How can she and Whit possibly prepare for their imminent showdown with the ruthless villain that devastated their world-before he can truly become all-powerful?
THERE IS NO HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
In this stunning third installment of the epic Witch & Wizard series, the stakes have never been higher—and the consequences will change everything.
My Thoughts: While slogging through this 3rd installment of the series I found myself willing to set it aside for typically mundane things, like, watching corn grow. Unfortunately despite the fact that I do live in Iowa I don't live near a corn field so I opted to do things like removing my pillows from my pillow cases and putting them back in because they seemed just a little crooked. Or constantly booting up Words With Friends to see if anyone took their turn (even though 25 seconds earlier they hadn't). After almost 2 days of reading then avoiding this book I finally finished.
What Worked: Well, we did get more information about Shadowlands. As near as I can tell this area is an in between for the dead. Dead people congregate there and wait. Some, will move on to somewhere else (although I don't recall where they move on to) and some, the ones who were nasty pieces of work on earth, stay there forever and become one of the Lost.
Unfortunately I can't think of anything else that worked for me about this book.
What Didn't Work: Going from one Witch and Wizard book to another it becomes glaringly obvious that we readers are not sure what timeline is at work here. From the end of the second book to the beginning of this third much has happened that we readers must pick up second hand. There is a blood plague systematically wiping out much of the Overworld. What? What is the blood plague? Where did it come from? How did it start? Never fear good readers....it must have been started by The One Who is the One to get rid of those pesky resisters of his New Order. At least that is what we think but there is nothing to confirm this.
The continuous usage of the letter M for magic. Not sure if this was used much in the first 2 books but in this installment it got annoying. Wisty asking Whit about his M. Bad guy Pearce mocking Whit about his lack of M. It felt like a false slang term used in attempts for an older person to connect with the younger generation. Speaking of Pearce. This was the first book in which he appeared and he had a wicked powerful 'gift' of melting peoples faces off. It was apparently given to him by The One. We have to assume that The One can bestow magic on his lackeys from Pearce's abilities but it is never confirmed.
The final showdown was almost anticlimactic also. When the Allgood kids used their magic against Pearce or The One instead of hurting them and/or killing them, the magic actually made them stronger. So how did The One get defeated when the Allgoods used even more magic against him? I don't know.
Another question I have is where are all the parents? We have a handful of the Resistance group....all of them are children. No one seems to have parents. The New Order has training facilities (all for children). Their troops seem to be all kids too. Where are the adults?
In a Nutshell: After reading 3 books in this series it has become more and more apparent that this is actually a poorly produced retelling of the Harry Potter series. We have magical children, dead parents, The One Who is the One (couldn't they come up with something other than this? I mean get real. Lord Voldemort was He Who Shall Not Be Named....seems pretty close to me.), multiple fighting scenes resulting in death and despair and lets not forget about Pearce with slicked back blond hair (Draco Malfoy anyone?). I know this series is not identical to the one written by JK Rowling but there are enough similarities that it's hard not to compare. I would not recommend this series to fans of YA novels. I'd push them towards his Maximum Ride series first.
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