Whit and Wisty Allgood are two siblings with Gifts, on the run from The One Who is the One, the leader of the New Order. Gifts are banned by law of the New Order, along with most other forms of entertainment: books, movies, music... the list carries on. These Gifts allow the brother and sister to evade The One. Their magic is the only thing stopping him from taking total control. The One is after them, looking to take their Gifts for himself so he would have total control of all the elements. Whit and Wisty must steer clear of The One, all the while trying to find a lost loved one, save their kidnapped parents, and try to figure out who is on their side... and who has traitorously turned to the side of The One.
I always find it interesting when I know more than one author has written the book I'm reading. I wonder who came up with what ideas, who wrote which parts, and who wrote more. I'm assuming James Patterson, although I don't know for certain, because his name is about ten times larger than Ned Rust's. I had read one book in the Maximum Ride series by Patterson and was very surprised, since by the way my friends were raving, I'd thought it would be better. Knowing the writing style of Patterson before reading this book, I did enjoy it more. I don't know how much of that was Rust's influence, or just my knowing what to expect.
I found this book to be written in an interesting way: from both Whit and Wisty's points of view. The interesting part is that they were both in first person, which doesn't usually happen when the viewpoint is that of two characters. Chapter to chapter, the name listed was either Whit or Wisty, and that's whose eyes the reader saw through. However, I sometimes found it to be disorienting or confusing. Seeing as how both names starts with a 'W' and have nearly the same amount of letters, I didn't always check closely enough and assumed it was the same character as the previous chapter. Then, when things didn't make sense, I had to return to the beginning of the chapter in order to find out who it actually was. I would have perhaps found it easier to keep up with if the fonts used for the names were different.
I found the chapters of this book reminded me of those of Mary Higgens Clark. Not content-wise, but length-wise. Although many of Mary Higgens Clark's chapters are short, there are also long ones. In The Gift, every single chapter was very quick. Once I'd finished the book, and looked at the pages versus chapters, the length averaged out to about three pages per chapter. I think the shortest chapter was two paragraphs long. I found that such short chapters stunted the story a bit. It's not like it always leaves off on a cliffhanger like some books, since there can't possible be a cliffhanger every three pages. Every time a chapter ended, my mind registered that I was beginning a new chapter and became detached from the storyline for a moment. I would have appreciated longer chapters.
Overall, I would say the book had many enjoyable aspects, including a good storyline, well-developed characters, and the ability to keep readers new to the series in the loop. Although it's not the best book that I've read in a while, I did like reading it. It was a welcome change from some other not as well-written books I've read recently. I would award this book a rating of three stars. An overall good book, definitely better than two stars, but not reaching my standard of four. I would recommend this book to a reader looking for illicit materials, magic, and life on the run.
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