Review: The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore

Before reading this book, I read the summary of 'I Am Number Four' online so I could remember where the storyline had got to and I'm really glad I did because this book seemed to flow seamlessly from the first book in the series. It picked up with John/Four not long after we had left him in the first book, which was really good in terms of the consistency of the storyline - I felt like I didn't miss out on anything as the reader.

I really liked having this book from the perspective of Marina/Seven as well as John/Four because with the first book being only from John/Four's perspective, it limited my knowledge as the reader to what was happening. However, learning about Marina/Seven's life and her past through having her story told by her was a real bonus to this book because, to me, Marina/Seven's life in Spain was more interesting than John/Four's life when he was living in Paradise. It interested me to hear about the people she knew at the orphanage and how her Cêpan had given up on them ever finding their way back to Lorien and how much danger that put them both in. Even though it was less action packed than the other perspective in this book, it had me just as gripped.

If I am being totally honest, I did not like Four/John much in this book. In the previous one, I found his romance with Sarah unrealistic because of who they both were and their shared interests (to me it seemed that he only liked her for her looks by how he described her) and in this one when he turned and contradicted what he had said about Sarah being his 'only love' made me think of him as a bit of a d*ck. Not only that, but him liking Six and trying to move things forward in their relationship when firstly, he was still with Sarah and secondly, Sam had said that he liked Six added to my distaste. It made me dislike him as a character because of his romantic actions and if I were Six, Sarah or Sam, I would throw him in the dust for that.

The storyline in this book was good, there is no doubting that. There was the constant threat of attack, making the book have high tension levels, but then contrasting that the friendship between Marina/Seven and Ella/Ten was a nice relief and something good that stemmed from the bad. Also, learning about Six's back-story was heart wrenching, though I was fully interested in it as well. It really made me feel for Six and all that she had had to go through, not just her losing her Cêpan, but the fact that she then had to face the harshness of the world alone at such a young age with so little guidance.

Something that really caught me with this book was the development of the different Legacies. In the first book we only saw Four/John's trouble with developing them and a brief glimpse of what Six was capable of, but in this book we got to see many different ones in the form of Marina/Seven's abilities, the breathing underwater one I found to be especially cool, and more about Six's powers that we didn't get to see before. Then, we also got a taste of what Ella/Ten would be able to do in terms of how much because of the power she already possessed to change her age. (I'm sure a lot of people I know would love to have that ability.)

In this book we were able to find out a bit more about the main villain and more about the history of the Lorien, for example the why they ended up on Earth and how they had been going there for much longer than that. I found that bit most interesting because I am a real fan of finding out more about the history and story before the story starts in a series like this where there is so much potential to learn and discover more things out.

The reason I did not rate this book higher was because of Four/John's romantic actions as I found them to be tedious and also because I felt like, if anything, there was too much action in this book and the constant battles seemed to be never ending.

Overall though, this was a great sequel and I can't wait to find out more about Nine, Ella/Ten and Setrákus Ra in the next book!

(Goodreads parallel)