D. J. MacHale

This is the first time I have lost sleep worrying about what will happen in a book. I should have just read the whole thing and stayed up the whole night! Yeesh!

But this book is just amazing. This whole series is amazing. Each book goes to a new territory that has a problem and each problem is something we can all relate to. This book actually got me terrified--because its situation reminds me of what might happen if a huge company like Wal-mart takes over everything.

And the characters in show more this series are hugely complex and developed, and really seem like real people. There is no "one-faced" characters. And because of that it's even easier to relate to them and to be gripped by the story.

There are so many things in this book that throw you off-balance. D.J. MacHale includes so many mind-blowing twists and turns you feel positively overwhelmed! I think it's this, the feeling like you are going through the same troubling feelings as Bobby does, that makes this series so popular. It's incredibly addicting, and it does not let you go.

This book is one of the best in the series.

And this series is the best. xD show less

This is the "penultimate Pendragon," as D.J. MacHale himself calls it. And boy, is it full of everything needed to lead into the final chapter of this series that literally spans all of space and time.

It has come back to Second Earth. Bobby, trapped on Ibara by his own hand, has a painful revelation to make. He hasn't stopped Saint Dane. Instead, the demon has freed himself and is now launching his final plan to bring about the Convergence and his ultimate goal. And he has, at last, chosen show more Bobby's home as the battleground.

A terrifying cult leader named Alexander Naymeer brings millions under his sway, pointing Second Earth toward a vision of utopia with a horrifying dark side. Mark and Courtney struggle to keep their heads in the game even as their ties to Bobby pull them into the center of the conflict. Saint Dane and his accomplice Nevva Winter come up with the most brutal and fiendishly intelligent plans yet. And Bobby, fighting with the pain of his own duty, ethics, choices, and responsibilities, will either triumph or shatter beneath it all.

Everything in this book is bigger. The series gets progressively darker, scarier, more suspenseful, more wrenching, more intense. Strange new twists get thrown in, things you weren't expecting at all. And the ending leaves you at the edge of a cliff at the end of all things, waiting to see what the final fight for Halla will bring. I am really counting on MacHale not to fumble this ending, and to take some of the strange concepts he's introduced and make them work well instead of fall flat. I can't wait! show less

I think we both persevered from pleasure in reading aloud together, more or less despite the story. We wanted it to be better than it was, yet weren't quite ready to give up on it. We started the second book (by a different author, and ostensibly better) but when the library eBook couldn't be renewed it was left without complaint.

Holes in plotting and circumstances: a special "flight cage" for a dog on a spaceship?! R kept noticing how quickly the novel moved through huge chunks of action, show more and identified how she'd write it differently. Good for that aspect, at least.

I do wonder how much this is representative of MacHale's writing, and how much as a hired gun he simply reflected what the publisher / editor demanded: set up the series, slot in your tale to another tale utterly outside your control (another author hired to write that one), tick off the various boxes on what is required of an opening book. I do not, however, wonder strongly enough to seek out another of MacHale's books and see for myself. show less

D. J. MacHale is EVIL! He has written a page-turning thriller narrated by a sympathetic main character and raised more questions than he has answered.

Tucker Pierce is a high school freshman on the island of Pemberwick, Maine. He and his family moved there after his father lost his job as a civil engineer in Greenwich, Connecticut. His dad has a gardening business and his mom is a free-lance accountant. Tucker loves the island with its tourists and beaches. His best friend Quinn can hardly show more wait to leave and do big things. But Tucker is content and happy to let things be just the way they are. He isn't an ambitious boy. He prefers to stay under the radar. He has a fear of failing at anything that keeps him from stretching himself.

Tucker's idyllic life is about to come crashing down on him. A death at a football game, a strange new performance enhancing drug called Ruby, and an invasion by a US Navy division called SYLO change Tucker's, Quinn's and his new crush-turned-friend Tori's lives forever. The people are told that SYLO has come to the island because of a new disease on the island. The island has been cut off from the rest of the country.

Lots of things don't add up for the kids. Why have they never heard of SYLO? How did SYLO manage to get so organized that they could bring in troops, weapons, equipment at such short notice? What are those mysterious black ships that make musical sounds when they travel? What does Mr. Feit, who is pushing Ruby, really want? Why is he running from SYLO? The kids decide that they have to escape from Pemberwick and let the rest of the country know what is happening there? However, the sea is being patrolled by Navy ships and helicopters and that won't be easy.

This is an exciting story that doesn't shirk from hard things. Characters, even important ones, die. People lie and betray. And Tucker needs to step up and take a stand. He can't just let things happen. He needs to act.

It isn't clear to Tucker, or to the reader, who the bad guys are. No character is all good or all evil. Like, Tucker, we are left with questions about what is happening. But D. J. MacHale's most evil action lies in the last three words of this story: TO BE CONTINUED... show less