A fast-moving twelve-volume crime thriller series from a bestselling Australian author. On New Year's Eve, Callum Ormond is chased down the street by a crazed man with a deadly warning: They killed your father. They'll kill you. You must survive the next 365 days!
April: Stranded in the middle of nowhere, terrified and alone, Cal is on the run. Somehow he must make sense of his father's mysterious drawings and solve a family secret from the past: the Ormond Singularity. But first he has to dodge the police and thugs who are closing in on him, and save his sister's life. He has 275 days. His world is falling apart...
Review:
Another book from the recent "Aussie invasion" of North American literature. So far, in the past year I've come across John Marsden's Tomorrow series, Jack Heath's Six of Hearts series and of course, these, all by Australian authors. Of course, it takes 3 bloody years for Aussie books to get here so the hubbub over these series has long since died down there.
To be honest, I only took up this series because I had nothing better to read and people seemed to be making a big deal about it. When I first started reading it I thought they were by a rookie author about our age, so when I recently found out that she's a veteran, I was majorly disappointed. The problems with these books are ones a beginning author might have missed, but a veteran should have long since corrected them.
Firstly and Secondly, cheese and formatting. Or should I say cheesiness and formatting. Either way. Having something like this last EXACTLY 365 days from January 1 to December 31 is just over the top. And having a high point of tension right in the middle and end of each month (that's the way every book thus far has been - slow in the beginning and and back half, tense in the middle and end)? Seriously? Life, especially that of a fugitive, is NEVER that consistent. If this were the real world, Cal Ormond would be wondering by the time June came around if God was playing with him or something.
Third, pacing/timescale. A plot this long easily gets awkward and boring and tends to drag. It needs to be skillfully handled in order not to do so. Usually it's epics, not thrillers, that can afford to take place over extended periods of time because a good thriller has relentless and increasing tension, which his hard to maintain over an extended period of time. The pacing of the books in this series suffer as a result, with boring sections in between high points of suspense instead of consistent tension.
Fourth, characters. None of the characters feel real. Even Cal, the first person narrator, seems stiff, awkward, and disjointed to say the least. He's lacking any real personality, which a first person narrator needs if the author is to write a good book (examples: Max in Maximum Ride and Tory in Virals). For that matter, every character in the series suffers from the same problems, but since they're not narrating the thing they don't seem so bad.
Fifth the cliffhangers. A proper cliffhanger comes AFTER the climax, but worries the reader more than enough to keep him hungry for the next book. These just do not do that. They end right AT the climax, the books are COMPLETELY missing the short but necessary downward arm of the plot triangle. Annoying to say the least.
Sixth, length. The books are SO SHORT they should have been combined into one long novel. I can finish one in less than a couple hours. TOO SHORT.
So why do I keep reading these books then? Two reasons
1. The endings require me to read the next one to find out what happens
2. I read too fast to be picky about what I read
As for recommending this to others, I say don't waste your time on this series. If you like the whole fugitive/on the run concept, read Gordan Korman's On the Run series - it's WAY better.
2/5 stars
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