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I Am Number Four Review

Updated: Nov 10

#5 I book with a number in the title: I Am Number Four, by: Pittacus Lore.

I Am Number Four is about a teenage guy and his guardian, moving to their next destination after receiving news that one of their comrades has been killed. Oh yeah, and they are all aliens from another planet named Lorien, forgot to mention that. As the story develops you learn more about their back story and why they are on Earth. Their race was separated into two types of people; Garde and Cepâns. Garde develop powers, aka Legacies, as they mature in age, and use these abilities to protect society. Cepâns are boring, have no powers, and are the ones that run society. And every Garde is assigned a Cepân as a guardian, to help them learn how to develop and control their abilities. (Let’s not question why other Gardes don’t just do the training since they should know better than anyone else how their abilities work).

Anyway, moving forward, when the alien boy was only a small child, their planet was attacked, conquered, and nearly destroyed by a race called Mogadorians, who were looking for resources after destroying their planet from pollution and overpopulation (sounds familiar right?). Before everything was destroyed, nine Garde children and their Cepâns were placed on a ship and escaped the planet during the chaos, to keep their race alive. They came to Earth which was the nearest planet with life and separated ways once here. By the way, a magical protection was placed upon the children, they were assigned numbers, and they couldn’t be killed by the Mogadorians out of order. If the Mogadorians came to earth to hunt them, let’s say they find number eight before the others, they can’t kill him or her until they find and kill, in order, children 1 – 7. I guess in a way it’s to protect them and give them more time so they can grow up and develop their legacies which will give them a fighting chance against the Mogadorians.

Now it’s been enough years so this boy is a teen, and number 3 has been killed. Every time someone gets killed, the others are warned by a scar around their ankle that adds a new ring in the event of a death. This would tell them when they are next. And our protagonist is number 4. They pack up all their things instantly and leave Florida, to find safety in Paradise, Ohio. In the process, they change identities (again), and now the young teen takes on the name of John Smith, and his Cepân is named Henri. They have to keep a low profile and prevent the Mogadorians from finding them, which of course doesn’t happen and the plot develops from there.

After reading the book, I finally understood why this book had so many mixed reviews. The book itself wasn’t very challenging or complex, and some plot moments seemed to just be convenient. For so much at stake, there weren’t enough consequences for the reckless actions taken throughout. It wasn’t until a little over halfway through the book that things got interesting for me, and the only thing that impressed me was how emotional the ending of this book came out to be. This only made the book more upsetting to me because if the rest of the book had had the same intensity as the final chapters, it would have been amazing; as long as you don’t think too hard on logic, that is.

I would have to give this book a lower rating than I would like, right in the middle, 2.5 out of 5. Perhaps after school ends in a few weeks I can take a moment to re-watch the movie which I can’t even remember past the first few pages of the book, and do a book/movie comparison, which hopefully will raise my rating of the book. Stay tuned!

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