Book 6/50
I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore
Type: Young Adult/Science Fiction
440 pages
Read on: February 2012
Rating: 1.00
Review: As you can see by the rating I did not enjoy this book in the slightest, so prepare for a lengthy review that rips it apart. I’m also warning you now, that there will be some spoilers, not too many major ones or ones that take away from the plot, but if you wish to know nothing just skip over to the last paragraph. Please and thank you.
As the title of the book states the main character, John Smith is number four. In total there are nine teenagers and their nine guardians that escaped while their home planet, Lorien, was destroyed. And now the Mogadorians are hunting all of them down, one by one. These nine teenagers apparently have to develop their powers, so eventually they can destroy these Mogadorians and revive Lorien to its former glory. While their powers are developing, and they haven’t reached their full potential, they are vulnerable. The nine teenagers are protected though. They have a charm branded on them, meaning that as long as one, two, and three are alive John Smith and his guardian are safe. Each teenager has to assume multiple identities and keep on moving so they can’t be tracked, therefore protecting them from attack. The kicker and what convinced me to actually pick up the book was that apparently the three before John are dead, and he’s next on the list.
*cracks knuckles* Let us get started, shall we?
The book started off okay, held my attention enough to get past the first few chapters. I liked John in the beginning. I actually liked him, up until I realized that the book was basically a male fantasy that was extremely poorly written, lacked character development, had a few plot holes, wasn’t suspenseful at all, and made me want to bang my head up against a wall. Let me elaborate. John is the new kid in school, under a new identity and automatically, almost instantaneously attracts the attention of former cheerleader, current photographer, good girl Sarah HART(get it? she has a good heart?) Sarah has an ex boyfriend, whose name is Mark and the quarterback, if I remember correctly. Mark is this jealous asshole, who automatically picks on John because well if he can’t have Sarah no one can. If this character line-up isn’t bad enough, then here’s the icing on the cake. Sam Goode. This boy is the stereotypical geek who is obsessed with anything to do with aliens, doesn’t like getting into fights, wears glasses, and becomes John’s only guy friend while in this school. He’s not really a friend, but more of a sidekick. What we have here is four overused stereotypes.
John begins developing these powers. The more he develops them, the cockier he becomes. He develops this complex where he needs to protect Sarah no matter what, because she can’t protect herself. He needs to give Mark a piece of his mind. He won’t leave well enough alone, he needs to teach them a lesson. Let’s see here. You’re an alien. You’re being hunted down. You know that you’re next to be killed, but instead of keeping a low profile, you decide to teach your girlfriend’s jealous ex-boyfriend a lesson? There’s something missing in John’s head. Some bit of logic maybe. I would even go so as to say that the author is probably living out his own fantasy in this book. There’s a major scene where Mark and his cronies play a prank on Sarah, Sam and John. Instead of just leaving the scene without Mark noticing by using those oh so amazing powers of his, John decides to face all of these football players head on. It becomes a fight, one against EIGHT. (Sarah, of course does nothing to defend herself, and Sam refuses to fight.) Here’s the problem with this. I get that John has this hero complex going on and needs to protect Sarah, but why does he think that in his situation it’s good for him to take on eight humans, who look stronger than him and beat them all no problem. I don’t care that he has super strength. His actions are just idiotic. There was definitely some sort of fantasy being played out by the author, where the author beats up eight in order to protect his lady.
The more the book continued, the more faults I saw. Sarah was a major problem. Her back story is one where while she was dating Mark, she did some bad things. Then something happened where she realized that cheerleading wasn’t everything and being bad wasn’t such a good idea. So she quit cheerleading, took up photography, and decided to be “good and nice from that day forth”. Here’s my problem with this. She’s blaming Mark entirely for her bad past. Yes, in the beginning Mark is an asshole, but as the story progresses he loses that trait almost entirely. Maybe he was acting out of jealousy or rage, I don’t know. But then again, the author did alter almost every character’s personality when he felt he needed to, so maybe I’m wrong here. Still her blaming Mark for her bad choices was an overall excuse. You can’t blame one person for altering your personality to that large of a scale. The other part of this is her promising herself to be “good and nice”. Not so much, that that isn’t a good goal, but more so that it gives the author an excuse to give her absolutely no vices. And boy did she have almost no faults. She was literally good at everything she did in the book. She even accepted that her boyfriend was a freaking alien without freaking out or laughing in his face. (This reminds me of Bella from Twilight and how she sees absolutely no problem with Edward the vampire. This is an alien and a human, but still, you see my point.) Overall Sarah was made out to the perfect girlfriend aka another one of the author’s fantasies. Her only role was to be the main character’s love interest.
As John develops all of his powers, he begins to lose all the respect he had for his guardian in the beginning of the book. His guardian, Henri, obviously knows more about Lorien, more about John’s powers, and more about what they have to do, than John does. He basically thinks of John as a son and only wants to protect him. John on the other hand, acts like a spoiled brat who thinks the world is Sarah all the time. He even goes so far as to use his powers against Henri to get exactly what he wants. (Have I mentioned that guardians don’t have powers? It was never really explained in the book how this genetically happened, and why the half of the population of Lorien would even want to watch these spoiled brats.)A major disaster happens in the middle of the book, that well John does something(again very stupid in his situation, but done in the name of love) that in all honesty should have caused him and Henri to relocate immediately. But does that happen. No. John doesn’t tell Henri. Henri finds out when it’s too late. John uses his powers against Henri. John runs off to save the love of his life. John and comrades surrounded by the enemy. Henri joins them. They hug it out. Asshole changes personality into good guy Mark and trusted by John. Sarah continues to be annoying. Sam’s personality flips over completely. John’s dog does some stuff like reveals he’s actually one of those alien animals that was saved from Lorien that shape shifts.. Aliens attack. Fighting scenes happen, that in all honestly I dragged myself through just to finish the book.
BUT in the midst of all this pointless fighting and horribly written scenes of what was supposed to be suspense, we meet Number Six. Number Six is the first strong female in this novel and the only major character I didn’t want to throw rocks at. She was smart, level-headed, strong(both physically and mentally) and could think straight. But although I loved her, there was one question plaguing me. Why was she even in the story? If we go back to the beginning of the story, didn’t the author state that if the teenagers were to meet this charm that protected them from being killed out of order wouldn’t work? So this basically makes all the remaining Loriens(Is that what we call aliens from Lorien? I don’t know. I’ll go with that.) completely vulnerable. Not just four and six who just met, but five, seven, eight, nine, and their guardians as well. Six explains her reasoning as her being tired of running and wanting to face the enemy head on. That’s all well and good, but now you’re risking the lives of everyone else involved which is just plain stupid. Furthermore during this fighting, Number Six gets seriously injured. The author makes it a point to tell us that these injuries were nearly impossible to recover from, but she recovers. With the help of a magical healing rock.
In conclusion, this book was a complete waste of my time. Every single character changes personalities when the author needs them to. The main character, John Smith was a lovesick, brat who needed to be thrown in a ditch. It felt like a male fantasy. The hero gets the girl, has a friend who is more of a sidekick and there for comedic relief, and eventually the asshole he beats up becomes his friend. There were multiple plot holes, including the fact that these aliens who had apparently been able to destroy an entire planet couldn’t destroy John and his group in the fight scene. I also didn’t understand if they had destroyed Lorien, then why the hell were they still going after these kids who didn’t seem like a possible threat at all. No personality was consistent. There were problems with everything, from characters to the setting to the plot to the writing style. Looking at the writing style, I’d like to mention that the author enjoyed repeating everything to clarify what he meant. Just to make sure the reader understood what he said in simple language before, he’d say it again even simpler a second time. I get that this was a young adult book, but it’s belittling to the smart teenagers. The teenagers that are able to read classics and grasp those books at a young age. Like in Twilight, the author here instead of repeating Sarah’s looks, he’d repeat things about how perfect and good she was and how he much he didn’t want to lose her. We get it, now shut up and continue the story. The Mogadorians are poorly described. I didn’t find them scary at all. This book made me bang my forehead into it up until the very end. I loved Number Six, the only character that stayed consistent, but being that she was introduced so late, the author probably didn’t have enough time to ruin her. I will not be returning to read the sequel. A well deserved rating of 1.00.
—Monica
Book 12/50
