The Wild Ways is a sequel to The Enchantment Emporium. I really enjoyed the Enchantment Emporium. It was a great tale of urban fantasy with interesting characters and a new take on magic and how it works. So I was excited to read the sequel, but had to put it down about half way into the book, which is really rare for me. In The Enchantment Emporium the antagonist is an evil Wizard. Not the same as Voldemort in Harry Potter exactly, but same idea, a bad guy that is a wizard with his own agenda, machinations and so forth. However, in The Wild Ways we get a new villain which is Big Oil. Big Oil is going to (OMG!) drill for oil. How horrible! This must be stopped! Well, I don't like paying high gas prices and I think you can responsibly drill for oil. The oceans actually release millions of gallons of oil each year from natural seepage. It's been going on for millions of years. Yes, oil spills can damage the environment, but only in the short term. The Environment works in Epochs, not decades and thinking an oil spill has any real lasting effect on the environment is kind of silly unless you have a really short term view of the world we live in. So the Politically Correct Big Oil is bad stance of the novel just kind of ruined it for me. I couldn't get into a "bad guy" that I don't really think is bad just because they are in the energy business. Imagine the "bad guys" are smoking pot and the good guys are going to put them in jail. Kinda hard to root for the "good guys" if you don't think smoking pot is really all that evil. With a villain like Voldemort there's no politics involved. He's just plain evil and wants raw power. He's not trying to stop global warming, or tax everyone for global warming. He's not trying to implement Universal health care or stop taxing you for Universal health care. These things aren't "evil" they're just different political decisions people make, and most people are evenly split 50/50 on these sorts of issues.
