Witch & Wizard: The Gift
By James Patterson and Ned Rust
Copyright 2010 by James Patterson, published by Little, Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017, ISBN 978-0-316-03625-2
Witch & Wizard: The Gift is the second installment in James Patterson’s Witch & Wizard series. I loved the first book in the series, Witch & Wizard. I thought the story was great and the characters were wonderful. I’m not as enthused about Witch & Wizard: The Gift. The cast of characters remains essentially unchanged, but they digress from the form they had in the previous book. Also, this book doesn’t, in fact, pick up from the same spot the where the previous book ended. It’s rather confusing.
I liked the combination of Patterson and Charbonnet in Witch & Wizard. I don’t think the combination of James Patterson and Ned Rust in Witch & Wizard: The Gift works as well. The story really diverges from the direction it seemed to be heading in the first book. Maybe Patterson wanted to change directions but the story ended up losing some of its character and ability to be related to. Instead of being a sequel it feels like a different story that just happens to have the same characters as another story. Little remains to bind it to the first book other than the names of the people in it.
I don’t want you to get me wrong; I still feel Witch & Wizard: The Gift is worth reading. It still carries on the story of Whit and Wisty, just not in ways you would have foreseen, but maybe that’s not all bad. The story doesn’t allow you to settle in a comfortable rut and say, “Oh yes, well this is absolutely what this story is about and this is what is going to happen.” There’s no point where you’ll find yourself saying that. But if you’ve read both books you’ll probably like the first better.
After reading Witch & Wizard: The Gift I’m still curious about what is going to happen to Whit and Wisty, but I don’t know if it’s a strong enough desire to make me read the next book in the series, especially if it’s another Patterson/Rust collaboration.
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