I am Number Four – Pittacus Lore

Buy at Amazon

I’m not sure when I grabbed this book for Kindle, I suspect it was on a free deal. And today I’ve mainly being feeling sorry for myself in bed, so I worked through a couple of books from my extensive tbr pile. This was one I wanted to read it so that I can watch the film, because I don’t like to watch the film before the book.

In this instance though, I don’t think it would have been a huge problem. The book is part of a franchise, written by Pittacus Lore, which is actually a writing team. Not that that’s necessarily a problem, I know lots of books that are cowritten.

No, I think my problem with this book is that it feels formulaic. Designed. Aliens on the run from another alien race, hidden in plain sight, because they look like teenage humans? Hm. But we can let that ride, I guess. What I really struggle with though, was the lack of any real feeling of emotion or character development. It all felt like scene setting, for a series, for a film, for spin offs. It isn’t written for its own sake, if that makes any sense?

I guess a lot of things I read when I was young were just as formulaic. The famous five, for example 😉 And I guess they were mainly written to pay the bills too. But I resent that a little more now, somehow. And I resent that this stuff is targeted at teenagers. There’s so much fabulous YA stuff out there, that’s written with real feeling to it, and this just isn’t it.

Also, I was annoyed at the continuity type errors in it.

‘All right,’ she says, and makes herself invisible.
She inches the door up just enough to stick her head out and have a look around. The rest of us watch with bated breath, waiting, listening, all of us wracked with nerves. She turns one way, then the other. Satisfied we’ve made it unnoticed, she pushes the door all the way open and we file out one by one.

Really. She’s invisible. How do you know she’s turning any way??

I’m guessing that in first drafts of books, there are probably lots of these kinds of errors. But this isn’t a first draft. Or maybe it’s really harsh of me to pick up on it – maybe I shouldn’t mention it?

But I’m a book blogger. I blog about books. When I find something that I think I ought to talk about, I’m going to talk about it. No more holding back on meh books. And yes, I’m sorry to the legions of fans out there, but I guess I’m saying that I thought this was kind of meh. So I’m not planning on reading any more of the series, unless anyone has any compelling reasons I should? Massive improvement in book 2?

I am still going to watch the movie though, because Alex Pettifer 😉