Vheissu

David Mack’s The 4400: Promises Broken (New York: Pocket Star [2009], 327 pp.) is much, much better than the previous volume in the series . In fact, the last hundred pages or so bolt you to your seat, forcing you to turn pages to catch up with the fast-paced action that somehow keeps several plotlines in order and that succeeds in presenting the information through various points of view. This novel probably won’t be the subject of literature courses fifty years from now (heck, two months from now), but it’s enjoyable, and for fans of The 4400 , it’s outright exhilarating. It’s difficult to condense everything that goes on in this novel in a few sentences. There are, as I said, a handful of plotlines at work. I don’t want to spoil them, but they involve a destructive plan by the remaining Marked and a confrontation between the military and Collier’s movement. Some of the stylistic problems that abounded in Cox’s book sometimes peek here. For instance, some metaphors soun...

Fun, snappy, not very well written but readable. I got to Greg Cox’s The 4400: Welcome to Promise City (New York: Pocket Star Books [2009], 288 pp.) because of the TV series (of course), and what carried me through to the end was the eagerness to know what happened after the final episode ended. There are plenty of defects here, but the overriding concern is not purity of style, gracefulness of language, or whatnot, but the plot. Cox wants to deliver a punch through a brisk plotline, and, well, he does just that (naught else). Two basic plotlines dovetail throughout the novel. The first is the idea to clone Danny Farrell (Shawn’s brother), in order to spread promicin everywhere (this may or may not count with Jordan Collier’s blessing, but it is set in motion by a troop of fanatic followers of his). The second is the plan to kill the Marked, a plan that stars the now very powerful Richard Tyler. Interesting enough. Now, the book is swollen with questionable literary practices. Fo...