" (James "I want money" Patterson & Gabrielle "My name appears on the cover 1/100th of the size of James Patterson's" Charbonnet) When we got stuck in Detroit because Delta decided to cancel our flight because they couldn't find any pilots because they're a terrible airline, my wife brought me two books to read in the airport: This book, and "A Dark Matter". I read this whole book in a few hours, and as I read it two things dawned on me: First, this is a young adult book, and by "young adult" the authors seem to mean five year olds; And two, this book is pretty bad. Now, I was a young adult once, and I recall reading some pretty good young adult books that respect the intellegence of thier readers. This is not one of those books. This is a book where the villian might as well be twirling his mustache the whole time he's on screen in between sticking cute puppies in hot dog buns and eating them with disgusting sound effects.
So this book is poorly written. This part leapt out at me enough that I went and found my copy of the book to quote it for you. From page 21:
"Make me," Byron said to Whit, then he gave a smarmy, oily smile, vividly bringing to life all the times I'd seen him in school and thought, What a total butt.What a total butt. I mean, okay, this is a young adult book, so I'm not expecting a life-changing masterpiece, but you know, young adult books can be good. They can feature real, interesting charecters, not lame one-dimensional heroes whose primary heroic virtue seems to be A.) Being a football player and B.) Being the narrator. They don't have to feature horrible lines like "What a total butt".
So okay, the book is not well written. It is poorly plotted (there's literally a new chapter every two pages for no particular reason I could figure out) and has a terrible ending, which I'm about to spoil:
Our heroes meet the villian, and he basically says "Bwa ha ha, the ANCIENT PROPHECY of squeezing more money out of my publisher decrees that we will have an awesome battle......... after you visit the next five novels coming to bookstores near YOU and collect the Magical McGuffins of Needless Plot Extending! Please buy the next volume, everybody! Poorly-written fake Snape out!"
Needless to say, I don't like this book.
Grade: F-
PS: I almost forgot the book's post-script, which contains a painfully unfunny list of acts banned by the evil N.O. organization; Look, it's They Might be Giants, but now the name is We Shall Be Titans! GET IT???????????????????????????? If we gave out anything lower than an F-, this book would get it.
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