by Sarah Bammel

Created on: January 28, 2011

“Witch & Wizard” by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet, follows two teenagers on a wild ride through the world as it is taken over by the New Order or NO for short. This book seriously lacks in areas and leaves for something to be desired.

The book is somewhat hard to follow because it jumps between the two main characters as narrator. It helped to listen to the audio book as it is read by Elijah Wood and Spencer Locke so as the narrator changes, so does the voice. The two main characters are Whit and Wisty Allgood as they are taken from their home in the middle of the night by force for nothing more than being a witch and wizard. They slowly learn about the New Order and their abilities.

The characters are kind of flat and the reader doesn’t really know them other than a few minor details. Whit is 17 almost 18, he’s a football star quarterback for his high school football team, recently gained 30 pounds, gets high on Red Bull and then gets “Bull in China store” syndrome as his sister Wisty describes it. Wisty is 15, she is a red head with freckles, and was due to serve over two weeks of detention at school. That is basically all that is known of the characters.

Then there are the names of the bad guys. The main bad guy is called The One Who is the One. After Whit and Wisty are taken from their home they are imprisoned and taken before The One Who Judges. There is also The One Who Commands, The One Who Imprisons, The One Who Assigns Numbers, and the list goes on; they are called The Counsel of Ones. Their titles can leave the reader feeling gypped, like the authors couldn’t think of something better, or this was the starting point and they ran out of time to come up with better names.

The book also starts with Wisty and Whit on a large platform with their parents and nooses around each of their necks. There is a large crowd gathered all wishing and wanting the four of them to be hanged. The end of the book takes you back to the same scene and promising to tell the rest of the story at a future date. This leaves the reader wishing for something more, which in the case of the two authors was the only really good thing about the book. It does leave an urge to find out how the characters get to that point and how they are going to get out of it.

Overall I would give the book 3 of 5 stars. The flat characters are hard to relate to, the titles of the bad guys leave the imagination wishing for something better, but the story itself is interesting enough to bring the reader through and patiently waiting for the next book.

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