Meg’s Review: I Am Number Four
Pittacus Lore — I Am Number Four
The only reason I picked up I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore was because the guy in the trailer for the movie was really hot. But as saying, “I’m going to see a movie because the star is hot” seemed like a shallow approach, I grabbed the book to build a stronger defense. Terrible plan, as it turned out.
I Am Number Four is a young adult scifi thriller with an interesting premise. Number Four is one of the last surviving members of an alien species whose home planet was destroyed by invaders. He and his fellow refugees (1-9) are hiding out on Earth, biding their time until they can take back their planet. However, the invaders followed them to Earth and are systematically hunting the survivors down in numerical order. As the book opens, Number Four realizes that Number Three has died, meaning his number is literally up (har).
Sounds interesting. And it would be if the authors, James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) and Jobie Hughes working under the pen name Pittacus Lore, actually stuck to that plot summary. Instead, they somehow managed to flip plot and subplot. Instead of being driven by an alien cat-and-mouse hunt, the pages are filled with Number Four’s foray into teenage hormones. He meets a girl, fights off a bully, befriends a nerd, and has some severe growing pains as he comes into his powers that make him flawlessly invincible. And with a clumsy handling of the first person point of view, it reads more like a book written by a teenager instead of for a teenager.
Over all, the main flaw of I Am Number Four is pacing. It has interesting characters (though they do suffer a bit from perfectionism. Where is the flaw in the super-powered alien or the effortlessly beautiful girlfriend? I think they might be angling for ‘I’m in love’ to be a flaw, but it’s a weak connection if that’s the case.) and a universe that the writers clearly know well. But the alien invaders don’t even show up until the very end of the novel, leaving the reader with a finish that is begging for a sequel. It likely would have made for a better read to simply condense the first book into about 100 pages and keep going instead of dragging out the idea across (at least) two books. That said, the ending was good enough to make me consider picking up the inevitable sequel. But only if it moves a heck of a lot faster than this one.
In the end, I rewatched the trailer for the movie to see whether I still wanted to see it given how mediocre the book was. Yep. The actor is still hot enough.
CanaryTheFirst
Stef
MoonblindCanary
librarycanary
piratecanary
quickdrawcanary
Rhiannon J. Taylor
theothercanary
whitney.jm
June 17th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Thats a shame. I was really looking forward to reading this book at some point. Still might though. Thanks for sharing.
June 19th, 2011 at 6:00 pm
If nothing else, it was a really fast read, so if you end up not liking it either it’ll be over quickly!
June 18th, 2011 at 5:29 am
Holy. You HAD to put the picture, didn’t you? That was a panty-dropping look if ever I saw one.
June 19th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
I know! Seriously, I saw the movie just for him. And I would put good money on me watching that terrible movie again on cable just to see him walk around all pretty again…
August 2nd, 2011 at 2:29 pm
[...] Review by the roving raptor critic, Meg. Read her book review of I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore here. [...]
September 4th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
[...] story basically picks up where I Am Number Four leaves off: John, his best friend Sam, and Number Six are on the run from the evil Mogadorians and the US [...]
December 29th, 2011 at 11:28 am
[...] Hunger Games, so I moseyed on over to peruse the selection. Most of the book I had read–the I Am Number Four series, Divergent, Variant–and there, in the corner, was Ship [...]
January 20th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
[...] suggest The Man with the Golden Torc to readers who’ve enjoyed books like Blood Oath and I am Number Four. While Edwin’s brief run-in with a sex cult makes me a little wary of recommending this book [...]
July 25th, 2012 at 12:08 pm
[...] To everyone, even those who don’t know my long love-to-hate relationship with the books, I refer to Pittacus Lore’s series exclusively as IAmSexy Number Four. There is a whole legion of very confused people wandering around the Midwest trying to find such an excellently titled series. Sometimes they actually stumble upon the real books and, after reading the first, they say, “Meg, this is utterly terrible. Why did you make them sound so good?” [...]