The Supernaturalist (urspr publ 2004; utgåvan 2005)

I'm just not feeling the love on this one. It's all a bit rushed and meh. I might feel differently if I were 13. ( )

Advance copy. ( )

I read this book because I love the Artemis Fowl books and I wanted to read more by the author. I was a bit let down. It was an okay book. It took more time than it should have taken to finish because of its weird and kind of random plot. The beginning was good and the story idea was great but the execution was lacking. The ending was also written with a second book in mind. There has not been a second book though.
Overall, it was not the best book, but it was also not the worst book I have read. ( )

I expected more from this book. I loved the opening. Cosmo Hill has spent his entire life at the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys. Parentally Challenged. Cute. But this is not your regular run-of-the-mill orphanage. Boys are put to good use as guinea pigs in medical experiments. Cosmo has a friend named Ziplock who's always running his mouth and getting in trouble with the ruthless marshall Redwood. Unfortuantely, I thought the book was going in one direction, one that I liked, when it took a sudden turn.

Cosmo and Ziplock manage to escape. It's anything but clean. Ziplock dies and Cosmo is saved by a group of teenagers who call themselves the Supernaturalists. They have the ability to see creatures that hasten your death by sucking out your life force when your health is compromised. Cosmo can see them also. He joins their group and they train him to take out the blue creatures with the hope of eradicating them. But the more they kill, the more they multiply.

There are some interesting characters. There's the Supernaturalist's leader, Stephan, who has serious beef with the blue creatures, Mona, and Ditto who looks like a baby but is actually the oldest in the group. Odd, but it's explained. One of my favorite characters is Ziplock. I don't know what Colfer was thinking when he decided to kill him off in the beginning. I never fully got over that.

What I'm not happy about with this book is the loosey goosey plot. It's all over the place with scenes that don't add any value. The blue creatures end up not being bad at all, which is fine, but getting to that realization is somewhat cumbersome. And what's with calling the S.W.A.T team Lawyers and Paralegals? I didn't get it. If you want a better example of what Colfer is capable of, read Artemis Fowl. ( )

Y6 : I think this is a good book for people that like to read about aliens and weird creatures. This book is a lot like ghostbusters.