Review-Half Bad

When a book has such a huge hype around it I generally find that I either love the book as much as everyone else does or I really don't find it all that great.  With this book I'm surprised that I actually fall somewhere in the middle.  It's not that I didn't like it, but while it was fresh and interesting I'm not sure it was amazing.  The first section of the book was told in second person, and while that's not something you usually find (at least not in YA, I'm not sure about other age groups) I found that it really worked.  Honestly the first part of the book was my favorite and I would have loved to see the rest of it, or at least more parts of it, with that same style. That being said the rest of the book wasn't bad, and in all honesty the premise was something that I hadn't read before, which kept me interested in the story.  I did find it a bit odd that the book covered so much of the main character's life.  Most of the time if a book talks about a character's early life it's done in flashbacks but this one took about 100 pages covering the earlier life of the main character, which did confuse me; it somehow seemed very important and not important at all in terms of furthering the plot (and I'm not entirely sure how that's actually possible).  I was slightly surprised with some of the violence that occurred in the book just because of the age of the main character at some points, but it reminded me of the prejudice and treatment held about African Americans after the civil war so the young age of the character did make some sense.  There are several pretty gruesome scenes in the novel as well as a smattering of swear words, so take note of that before reading the novel yourself (or before giving it to a younger reader).  There was also a slight bit of romance (which I didn't feel a ton of heat behind) but it wasn't the main focus of the story and took up no more than 30 pages total, so if that's something you're looking for it's not a large part of the book.  Overall it was an interesting concept and I liked the fact that the main character was a teenage boy (which is even more interesting when you realize the author is a female), but for me it wasn't anything overly fabulous.  I'll probably check out the second book, just to see what happens and I would recommend it to fans of fantasy novels and teenage males in general.  While I may not have adored it I'm sure it will find fans all over the world and I wish the author the best.  She has great ideas and an interesting new voice that I'm glad has been added to my bookshelf.

4/5 dust spirits