What do You think about El Lado Oscuro (2014)?
I'm intrigued by this witch-filled world. I'm interested in the boy Nathan and the choices he will make. I am very troubled by large parts of the book -- I don't care how easy healing is, a book that is consistently, deliberately about torture and abuse doesn't really work for me. There are bright spots, but I'm having a hard time with several things. 1: I don't understand why the council of white witches is going with systematic torture. What is it supposed to accomplish? 2: There is nothing about the portrayal of the white witches that indicates that white = good -- which I guess is sort of the point, but meh. That the good guys aren't ever really all good guys, and you have to just people on their individual choices is kind of a simplistic message. So as an adventure goes, it's all right, but also kind a grind. A somewhat horrifying grind about the debasement of a person based on nothing more than his parentage and how he survives it. Timely, I suppose, but more prurient than preventative I suspect.And finally, I know that I shouldn't hold the book responsible for not living up to the ridiculous hyperbole of praise on the back cover, but man, the cover is beautiful, so I like to look at it, and the back cover is full of crap.
—Smanjaayy
This book was 12x better than i thought it would be. I thought witches we've all been there haven't we? But then these were a different breed of witches to what i've become useful. In fact, the whole story was a different breed. There was also something in the writing, the way it was written. I'm not sure what it was but it was good. Parts of this book were wildly barbaric such as the cage and in a way it is a reflection of real life the way that you believe you're doing good by getting rid of the bad people. The Hamlet quote at the beginning summed the whole book up very well.
—julie
THIS REMINDS ME OF THE YOUNG ELITES BY MARIE LU, A LOT ACTUALLY.
—nsoto
