The Last Thirteen #2

James Phelan

Sam is still dreaming. For him, it is getting more difficult to tell the difference between dreams and reality. He’s been stranded in several countries, including Egypt, but now it’s his job to convince the 12th dreamer that she belongs with him.

Once again this is an action packed novel, story-focussed and story-driven. I don’t think I spent a minute thinking about the individual characters, only the overall picture of action.

Alex, whose character development I complained about last time, certainly gets a lot more back-story. I can’t believe I picked that! Well, at least picked him out as a probable suspect…

I still wish there was more about the actual abilities of the current Dreamers. The experiments by a certain group certainly lend themselves to me learning more about it. Not to mention extending them. It sounds good in theory, but in practice? We’ll have to wait for the next book.

Each novel of this series has a nail-biting cliffhanger. I don’t know if the author came up with this method by himself, or whether this is a bigger novel chopped into serialised bits, or just a fine marketing technique. Either way, you can tell when the end of the novel is coming, because it will be just before you get a great piece of information.

Repeat from my earlier review: It’s a bite-sized spy/genius/warfare novel that’s going to get your non-reader interested in reading again. If you’re not sure, to me it seemed similar to Robert Muchamore’s Cherub series. If you’re not sure if your son/daughter is ever going to get away from comic and graphic novels, offer this instead. The action is fast-paced and there’s hardly any emotional baggage or ‘feels’ to get in the way.

I received this novel directly from Scholastic as an Advance Reader copy. This has in no way influenced my review. This novel was released to the public before I got a chance to write up my review. You can still get on it in time for Christmas!