Xpresso Reads

The trailer for this movie made me read this book. It seemed promising. I did enjoy the story but I expected much more from the reviews I read prior to. The basis is simple. 9 kids come to Earth from their ruined planet to live out the war and maybe someday return to repopulate. A protective spell cast upon them makes them only able to be killed in sequence. John, the protagonist, is number 4 and number 3 has just been killed. So... we have aliens with a range of superpowers, and they're being hunted. Nothing particularly original here. Throughout the book I had that feeling of familiarity. Probably from Smallville. But I guess with Alien stories originality can only go so far. Regardless, I still enjoyed the plot and found myself wanting to keep reading. It was never slow paced, except the action scene at the end was a bit drawn out. The characters were likeable. The author didn't spend a lot of time on character development though, so they all just mashed together. Some of their reactions were also a bit unrealistic: Mark suddenly turning nice and Sarah's non existent reaction to finding out he's an alien. The relationship between John and Sarah was very mushy mushy. Since the narrator is male I think I expected less corniness. But by the end they did grow on me and I felt sad by the way it ended.The worst part for me was the writing and vocabulary. It was very simple and some parts were hard to read. The battle scene for example, he keeps referring to the alien soldier as "it" : "It reaches one hand over its shoulder and returns with a gun that begins conforming to its body, wrapping around its forearm." It annoyed me and got confusing. I sometimes had to read a sentence twice to figure out if he was referring to the alien or something else. Just call him "he"!! (I've read up on the author (who is actually James Frey) and he seems a bit shady. He's also got like a dozen pen names!!? ) Anyways, most of the book still reads easily, it just needed mention.The actual plot is what saved the book. Despite all the negativity I felt towards it, the story itself was still entertaining enough for 3 stars.