13th Reality by James Dashner

I am going to start out this year with something I don't normally find: a book I don't particularly like.

James Dashner's 13th Reality series had the makings of an interesting and fantasic saga. It is about a boy named Atticus Higgenbottom who has lived a normal teenage life, until he recieves a mysterious letter from a mysterious person asking for his help, saying that if he doesn't, hundreds of people could die. The letter gives him clues that will lead him to the anonymous sender. Tick is unsure about the idea, but he knows that he can't let all those people down, so he begins to solve the clues and gets led into a journey that uncovers talents he didn't know he had and changes his life.

I did like the first book rather well; it had a good story line. But it went downhill from there.

I lost my interest in the story because it became drawn out and it never had the kind of action the got my heart pumping and made me say to my mom, "Just one more chapter!" In between the strained action and story line, James Dashner put nuggets of information that were key to the story that I didn't catch everytime.

And because it was a children's book, he put some humor in it. I liked some of the lovable characters, like Rutger and Mothball at first, but eventually his humor seemed forced and more like an afterthought. All of this combined made it hard for me to keep reading the series.

But James Dashner is not a bad writer. He came up with an original story that could be thought-provoking and intriguing, but he did not tell it very smoothly. I think James Dashner is better suited to writing adult fiction. I have read his other book Maze Runner, which I thought was better than the 13th Reality series (I will do a review on this one later).

I would not recommend this book. Try some of James Dashner's other works instead. -J.E.