I Am Number Four

I apologize in advance for letting my hipster side show, but I definitely knew about I am Number 4 before it was popular. I stumbled across this book in a young adult section of a book store (where I spend an embarrassing amount of my time) and I thought it sounded AWESOME!

This was me upon finding this book:

This was me after reading the first HOLYFREAKIN’EPIC chapter:

This was me after discovering that the main character is just a boring whiny teenager:

This was me after finishing the book and realizing that I’ve been taken for a fool:

That’s right people. Pittacus Lore thinks that his readers are idiots. He dumbs down every concept in this book so that what promised to be like this:

Actually turns out like this:

Woah woah woah is the author’s last name really Kirk? That’s like if a frycook’s last name was Lagasse.

Being an intelligent human being, I was pretty insulted by the dumbassness of this book, and I was pretty angry at the author, Pittacus Lore. Except here’s the kicker: Pittacus Lore is a pseudonym. I have no idea who actually wrote this book but it was not Pittacus Lore. How do I know this? Pittacus Lore is a character in his own freakin’ book. Now, this has the potential to be cool (check out Lemony Snicket in A Series of Unfortunate Events) but in this book it fails. It fails with a violent fury. It crashes and it burns. And then it explodes. And then dies of natural causes.

You know why it fails? Because this book is written from the perspective of the main character, John (oh, by the way, the protaganist’s name is John Smith. The originality astounds me.) How can Pittacus Lore be a character in his own book, claim to have written the book, and then have the book narrated by some shit-for-brains teenager who can’t even recognize that his dog, who’s dumbass name is Bernie Kosar, has unusual powers?

“I leave Bernie Kosar in the dust. I look behind me and he is running as fast as he can, yet I am pulling ahead of him. The wind through my hair, the trees passing in a blur. It all feels great. Then Bernie Kosar bolts into the woods and disappears from sight. I’m not sure if I should stop and wait for him. Then I turn around and Bernie Kosar jumps out of the woods ten feet in front of me.

I look down at him and he looks up at me, tongue to the side, a sense of glee in his eyes.

‘You’re an odd dog, you know that?’”(page 195).

Now that right there just doesn’t make sense.

I also take issue with the name of the planet that they are originally from. It’s called Lorien. This name is sooooo original for a coupla reasons:

1) The author’s last name is Lore. So….what? You thought of a cool word and decided to use it for everything? Get yourself a goddam baby name book and think of some different names. J.K. Rowling practically invented an entire dictionary. You can think of a few good names if you actually put any sort of time into it.

2) Lorien is already a place. And it is not a dying planet billions of lightyears away. It is this:

It will always be this, and stealing from J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the least cool things a writer can do. Yes he was brilliant, but using his material does not make you brilliant.

So as you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy this book. I do not recommend it. Even the battle sequences were predictable and just plain stupid.

You're a fool.

The worst part was that the novel ended with a cliffhanger. His guardian left him a very important letter, explaining why he is on Earth and other really important, intriguing things, and John goes “Oh, I’ll read it later”, pockets it, drives away into the sunset, and the book ENDS. It ENDS.

........

WHAT?!

I understand that for the purposes of writing a sequel, you want at least some sort of cliffhanger but that is just the sleaziest thing I have ever heard. It’s a cliffhanger because he decides not to read a letter? In my definition, the cliffhanger needs to be something completely out of the protaganist’s control. Maybe his girlfriend gets kidnapped? An old man appears and tells him everything will be explained if he follows him to his secret lair? A bad case of heartburn threatens to ruin his day? ANYTHING other than choosing not to read a letter immediately. It’s obvious to me that Pittacus doesn’t give a shit about this story, he just wants to insure that he has a steady income.

That Pittacus. Besmirching the name of Young Adult Literature.

For SHAME!

And so I rate this the lowest of the low.

I Am Number Four is not a gem of the genre. It is ANTHRACITE.

Is there any hope for young adults? Do these gems I am searching for exist? Stay tuned to find out!