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A review by ashleylm
Die drei ??? und der Super-Papagei by Robert Arthur
3.0
A decent-enough sequel, but I found myself wincing or shaking my head fairly often. I'm all for shades of grey in bad guys (no one sets out saying "I'm evil, I'll do evil things," but the relationship between protagonists and antagonists was all over the place here, and not handled well, in my opinion. There was no Alfred Hitchcock—and Worthington's place was taken by a colourless substitute—which makes no sense at all since it literally costs nothing to include them. It's a book, it's not a movie script.
The boys did less 'investigating' and more 'stumbling into solutions' which is profoundly unsatisfying. And the atmosphere (aside from a scene with fog near the end) was decidedly more spy/thriller than creepy horror mystery, which seemed to be their USP in the first book.
I had to go to the effort of interlibrary loan through my university to find this one (or pay silly amounts of money for a used copy) and I'm not sure I'll be seeking out the third any time soon. Although oftentimes that's when the quality creeps back up again ...
(Note: I'm a writer myself, so suffer pangs of guilt every time I offer less than five stars. These aren't ratings of quality, just my subjective account of how much I liked them: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)
The boys did less 'investigating' and more 'stumbling into solutions' which is profoundly unsatisfying. And the atmosphere (aside from a scene with fog near the end) was decidedly more spy/thriller than creepy horror mystery, which seemed to be their USP in the first book.
I had to go to the effort of interlibrary loan through my university to find this one (or pay silly amounts of money for a used copy) and I'm not sure I'll be seeking out the third any time soon. Although oftentimes that's when the quality creeps back up again ...
(Note: I'm a writer myself, so suffer pangs of guilt every time I offer less than five stars. These aren't ratings of quality, just my subjective account of how much I liked them: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)