I Am Number Four (edition 2011)

This was right around the rounding cutoff at 3-1/2. I was going to give it a three but decided at the last minute that it was above 3-1/2 and would be rounded up. Pittacus Lore did, after all, do an excellent job at what I believe he wanted to do. There's not much depth to the characters; not a lot of development in the things going on in their lives that surrounded the main story line; circumstances that were a bit cliche. But I don't believe he intended anything different. I think he was out to create an exciting, "they walk among us", alien adventure. And he did a great job at that. This was an action film on paper, complete with visual special effects, which is a pretty good trick when you're using printed words on paper. Well he did it. Very visual. Great descriptions. The publisher gave us the first couple short chapters in the next book and I have a feeling the story's going to get better and better as he gets further into it and am looking forward to it. If you have anything like a 50 page rule you might save yourself the time. But if you like action and have a little patience, go for it.

If you know someone who's had the misfortune to be in an environment that differentiates between boy books and girl books, this is probably a great boy book. ( )

We listened to this one on audio, and except that the female voices all sounded slightly annoying done by the male narrator, it was very well done. (Fortunately, there's more male than female characters, so it didn't really detract.) We really enjoyed this book. The characters are fun and well-developed, and the action at the end is non-stop! It was fun trying to guess what was going on before "John Smith", the 15-year-old alien main character, figured it out. We were rooting for him, his guardian "Henri", and his brand-new best friends Sarah, the former cheerleader-turned-school photographer and Sam, the resident geek/ alien conspiracy theorist, and John's "dog", Bernie Kosar, throughout the novel. We haven't seen the movie yet (which I'm sure will vaguely resemble it), but will be looking forward to reading the sequel, The Power of Six, when it comes out. ( )

Picked up toward the end ... the last 50 pages renewed my hope for the next ones in the series and might have possibly changed my mind about reading the others. ( )

This was a really irritating read. I hadn't realised it was a YA (Young Adult) novel until I started it, but that in itself wouldn't have been a problem - a lot of my favourite novels are pitched at readers young enough to be my children. The problem is that while there is the potential for a great story here and some of the writing is occasionally good, the book for the most part is badly written and VERY poorly edited. I would almost venture to say unedited, as there are so many flaws and downright errors that you would think someone would have caught them if they had bothered to read it critically before publication (I wasn't trying to read critically, and they leapt out at me). It reads like a first draft, when ideas and rough dialogue are simply being dumped onto the page, not a finished product.

I'm not going to go into extensive detail - life's too short and I've already spent more time on this than it deserves. Examples include contradictory sentences within the same paragraph, incorrect words that seem to have slipped through simply because they wouldn't have triggered spellcheck ('quip' where the meaning of the sentence clearly requires 'clip' is particularly memorable), and plot developments that simply don't make sense in light of what has happened up to that point. The teenage love story is unbearably cheesy. Plot and character are underdeveloped and the tone is uneven; short, simplistic, frankly hackneyed sentences are overloaded with sophisticated adjectives. They'd be fine if the prose style itself was more sophisticated, but here they're just out of place. It's the sort of book where the author uses 'astute' instead of 'smart' even though the overall style of the writing, and the fact that the narrator is a 15-year-old boy, is such that 'smart' would be the better word.

All of this could have been fixed with help from a good editor and a bit more time and attention dedicated to the actual craft of writing. I'm sure of this because Pittacus Lore, whoever he or she is, is clearly not a talentless writer who'd simply stumbled onto a good idea. There are moments - unfortunately very brief - when the writing is quite wonderful. The first two paragraphs at the beginning of chapter 22 are a delight. Pittacus Lore has the ability to do far better than this, but sadly probably won't, as this book has somehow managed to be successful as it is. My edition includes the opening chapters of the sequel, which looks to be just as poor. I won't be reading it. ( )

Even though this is classified as young adult, I as a sdult, was pulled into Number Four's story. I loved the book so much that I took me about 3 hours to read it from front to back and towards the end, I found myself gripping the book in anticipation for the conclusion.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes the sci/fi factor and conspiracy theories about aliens.

5 Stars:)

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