Second Bookses

After the abrupt ending of Trish Milburn's White Witch, I was eager to see what happened with the characters, so when I had the opportunity to review a copy of the sequel, Bane via NetGalley, I took it. When we last saw Jax, who'd left her coven wanting to be a good witch, and her friend (possible cousin; it's confusing) Egan, they had left their friends (and significant others) Toni and Keller to keep them safe and headed for Salem, Massachusetts, hoping to find answers about a legendary white witch, which could possibly help them defeat the dark covens they came from.Once in Salem, they begin seeking answers in the library, and meet up with others whose families descend from those who lost members during the Salem witch trials. They learn that while some took the dark powers, others took no -- or little -- power, and another group is called the Bane, and may be able to help Jax harness the power she took in fighting off the covens in the climax of the previous book. As they research what happened around the time of the witch trials and the Bane, Toni and Keller go missing, and they fear they may have been taken by the covens.If I thought White Witch was full of YA anachronisms, Bane had more, including more Whedon references and a 16-year-old character wearing a Battlestar Galactica shirt, which still seems odd considering the series ran at 10 PM, and the character would have been eight when it started, although I suppose maybe by 12 or 13 the character may have started watching toward the end. Still, there's nothing more current that the teens are interested in, and it dates the book even more than if the references were current, and they aren't things I think a lot of the current cop of teens will identify with.Once again, too, the book seems to end abruptly (actually, in the middle of a scene), and while I know it's meant to be a cliffhanger, the super-short length (20 pages shorter than the first book) and the the pick-up for the next book (shown in the preview for the third book) really make this feel like one book cut up to be three books. I'm honestly not sure after this one if I'll be picking up the third book when it comes out.