The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan

Who are you and what did you do with Rick Riordan? I love every other one of your books, what happened? How was it that you wrote a boring book? The beginning was good and the end was good, but that's IT! The middle was plain dull. Maybe it's that it's just getting to many characters. Most of his books revolve around three characters or so. This one had seven. I was looking forward to a book that will entertain me, and I get a book I have to force myself to get through. I've read other books about that length in a day, why didn't this take me only a day or two? I have a very serious question. Seriously, it's the most important in the world. Who are you and what did you do with Rick Riordan.

The characters are decently developed. In his writing, you can tell he's a good writer... for elementary school students. I can feel him dumbing it down. Not the content, but the quality. It's not a good matchup. When you have stuff that borders on teen content and little kid writing, it tends to get sloppy. I couldn't get myself into this because of that. A friend of mine who's also reading it, agrees wholeheartedly. Going back a few sentences, I really don't like dumbing down. I know I'm not dumb and I want the writing to not treat me like I am. I have two quotes from a post Ally Carter made a few years ago that I think fits perfectly. "It has been my experience that you should have different expectations of teen readers than adult readers: you should expect your teen readers to be smarter." It very much fits, since Rick Riordan has written adult and child/teenish books. Another quote by Ally Carter "Teens are used to being challenged and tested and forced to think about things analytically, so do NOT write down to teens. Not if you want a career in YA literature." I think these both fit the whole, dumbing down theme.

I wish I could be kind, but in this case, I just have to go with blunt. The plot is weak. It sags in the middle. It has too much unneeded detail. I feel the need to use another Ally Carter quote. "... until you're not writing something with twelve words that could just as easily be said with seven." I love you Rick Riordan, and I'm sorry. But I give this book a two.

Nevermore by James Patterson

  Nevermore was a decent book. Well written and the plot was completely unpredictable. I started the book mid-afternoon and finished it by dinner. There was a problem though. I've been waiting for this book for months, and it just didn't live up to my hopes of what it would be. The book was set up to be this huge, amazing finale. But in reality, it wasn't.

  The main character is Maximum Ride. She's strong, smart, and will do anything to protect the people she loves. After a while though, she gets repetitive. Kill them, save her, rescue him, save the world, etc. Rinse and repeat and you see how the book (and series) is. There's also the love triangle. In some books, the love triangle is fun. Here, it's boring, annoying, and not needed. The book would have been much more interesting without guy number two. Guy number one is a first class jerk. I don't see what she likes in him. Personally, I'd prefer it if she ended up with neither guy.

  The plot of the story twists and turns so much that the book wouldn't always make sense to me. I like books with action, don't get me wrong, but this one had way too much. It was boom, boom, boom. One thing ends another begins. A little break is nice. The plot builds up to a lot of stuff that didn't happen. For the entire series, it's set up for one thing to happen, then a totally different thing happens instead. It's one thing to have one guy as the bad guy, and it turns out his second in command is the evil guy. But here, the bad guy is one guy, but a totally different bad guy shows up at the end. That probably didn't make sense, it didn't in the book either. The book has way to many loose ends. The author throws in a bunch of info right at the end, and never explains it. That usually wouldn't bother me, but this is the last book. The end of this book is the end of that world. I get no further explanations.

  So, in the end, the book was interesting. I was looking forward to reading it. But I just didn't like it. I probably should have seen it coming. The hints were there in his other books, but I didn't see it. So I give this book two stars.