Review: THE RISE OF NINE

The Rise Of Nine by Pittacus Lore
Book 3 of Lorien Legacies series
Read by Neil Kaplan, Marisol Ramirez and Devon Sorvari. Genre: urban fantasy
Format: paperback & audiobook

About The Rise Of Nine:

In the beginning we were a group of nine.

Nine aliens who left our home planet of Lorien when it fell under attack from the deadly Mogodorians.

We scattered on earth and went into hiding.
We look like ordinary teenagers.
We are not.
Until I met John Smith, Number Four, I'd been on the run alone, hiding and fighting to stay alive. Together we are much more powerful. But it could only last so long before we had to separate.

They caught Number One in Malaysia.
Number Two in England.
And Number Three in Kenya.
They caught me in New York - but I escaped.

I am Number Six. The Mogodorians want to finish what they started.

But they'll have to fight us first.

Source: Info in the About The Rise Of Nine was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15820848-the-rise-of-nine on 26/12/2012.

This book is chuck full of too stupid to live characters with a weak plot.

Review:

I know from Book 2 that some of the protagonists are too stupid to live (TSTL) but I'm kinda hoping that the TSTL would dumb down in this book. No such luck! Your in a cell with Setrákus Ra so you point your Morgadorian cannon somewhere else and kill foot soldiers in order to give Setrákus Ra all the chance in the world to choke hold you to death. Non-realistic scenes like that brought the suspension of disbelief to rock bottom! And this is not the only TSTL scene in this book. Annoying!! This book might be a quicker read for those readers more tolerant than me. But because I had to have breaks from the stupids, this book took a long while to read. Another thing which I find annoying is that Pittacus Lore is so very fond of cliffhangers. This author duo almost always ends a chapter in a cliffhanger. They might think that cliffhanger is a brilliant writing tactic, and it probably is, but in this series I just find it supremely annoying!

James Frey aka Pittacus Lore (with this book) obviously has great imagination! His world of the Lorien Legacies is beautiful and intricate! But he needs to learn how to build-up plot better because the plot is pretty weak, specially in this book. The character developement could sure use a lot of improvement, like giving them consistency for one. A few lessons with a fight scene expert would also do a world of good. Might make the fight scenes more realistic.

I have to say that the narrators are all professionals! They read in clear distinct words with appropriate tone and diction. I can't hear any slurring from any of them all throughout the audiobook. This tugged the rating of this book up a bit.

At the end of it, this book has a lot of promise which were not all brought out to it's full potential. And no matter how good the narrators were, there are just too many annoying qualities in this book for me to read further in this series. After the third book, I think I now have a firm grasp of this series and sad to say that this one is not for me. However if they make further movies based on this series, I will most likely watch it in the hopes that the annoying qualities would disappear in the movie version.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 2
Character development = 1
Story itself = 1.5
Ending = 1.5
World building = 4
Cover art = 1.5
Pace = 1 [paperback] / [audiobook: 10 hrs and 8 mins listening time]
Plot = 1
Narrators = 4.5

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Lorien Legacies series: