Scan barcode
A review by saerryc
Limbo - O poder dos cinco by Anthony Horowitz
1.0
At one point this was one of my favorite series, and part of my problem with this last book might be that it took Horowitz too long to finish it and I've aged too far out of the target demographic. Still, I can't help feeling that this is by far the weakest book in the series; honestly it sort of pisses me off how bad it is after how much I liked its predecessors. I had a number of big problems with both the ideas and the writing:
No more of the cool mythology tie-ins that made Evil Star and Nightrise (in particular) great – This is just straightforward post-apocalyptic good verses evil fantasy.
Incredibly repetitive – There's no need to keep recapping stuff that happened in previous books and rehashing how the Old Ones are like super evil and stuff over and over again.
Random use of first person – I don't care about the jumps between characters, but the jumps between first- and third- person are jarring and totally unnecessary. To be honest I'm not sure there's much point to Holly's character existing at all.
Overlong – It's established pretty early on that the Five are headed to Antarctica for the final battle. Once the reader knows that the stage for final battle is set, most of the details involved with their getting there become fairly inconsequential. As a result, the first three-quarters of this 700+ page book are little more than filler. For example, the episodes with are pointless. There's no real threat there; they're just arbitrary obstacles along the way.
Horrible plot devices – I really, really hate how
The ending sequence in Antarctica is somewhat better but nothing ever happens that isn't overly telegraphed, totally predictable, or in any way interesting.
No more of the cool mythology tie-ins that made Evil Star and Nightrise (in particular) great – This is just straightforward post-apocalyptic good verses evil fantasy.
Incredibly repetitive – There's no need to keep recapping stuff that happened in previous books and rehashing how the Old Ones are like super evil and stuff over and over again.
Random use of first person – I don't care about the jumps between characters, but the jumps between first- and third- person are jarring and totally unnecessary. To be honest I'm not sure there's much point to Holly's character existing at all.
Overlong – It's established pretty early on that the Five are headed to Antarctica for the final battle. Once the reader knows that the stage for final battle is set, most of the details involved with their getting there become fairly inconsequential. As a result, the first three-quarters of this 700+ page book are little more than filler. For example, the episodes with
Spoiler
Scarlett in the casino or Matt in the slave campHorrible plot devices – I really, really hate how
Spoiler
Matt is given the future in the Library, and how everything he does from that point onward is just him acting out what he's been told is going to happen. It feels like a huge cop out on Horowitz' part. How much more dramatic would it have been if Matt had been forced to actually make choices when he didn't know the outcome in advance, when it wasn't given from the start that everything was going to turn okay? How much cooler would it have been if the Library had only given Matt vague hints to point him in the right direction, and he had only realized in the moment that they could win if he sacrificed himself? How much more interesting would it have been if he had been allowed to come up with this idea on his own, instead of having it given to him, if the emphasis had been placed on the choices of the main character rather than on predestination? I was waiting for there to be some twist, for things to not go according to plan in some way, maybe for this to have been a trap set by the Old Ones to bait Matt into giving himself up, for him to have to actually do something instead of following instructions, but it never happened. I feel that the trip to the Library goes a long way toward undermining Matt as a character.The ending sequence in Antarctica is somewhat better but nothing ever happens that isn't overly telegraphed, totally predictable, or in any way interesting.