One of the chosen has gone renegade.The Lost Books series has been very consistent. Sadly, they're constantly below average. Not to say I didn't enjoy them. I did. But when compared to Dekker's vast collection of well, anything else he's written they just don't measure up.
Turning his back on all that he once believed, Billos does the forbidden and enters into a Book of History. He lands in a reality as foreign to him as water is to oil. A place called Paradise, Colorado. He has strange new powers given to him courtesy of a mysterious figure known as Marsuvees Black.
The chosen four have survived the desert, escaped the Black Forest, battled the Horde, and added a spirited refugee to their number. But nothing has prepared them for the showdown that Billos, the renegade, will lure them into.
Plotwise, the book was fantastic. It was mysterious, thrilling, and suspenseful. It had me wide-eyed, stuck in the realm of fiction, and turning pages late into the night. The book directly prior to Renegade leaves with Billos pushing his blood on one of the Books of History and jumping into a portal of sorts. This is exactly where Renegade takes off and from there it simply doesn't give up. The plot may well be the best in the entire six-book series.
The character development was definitely there as well. Johnis and Silvie began to really bloom in this book as a *ahem* couple. Ah! Yeah, I know a lot of you would kill me for suggesting that a bad thing. Oh well, I figure I've got at least five minutes till the mob shows up. Throughout the series this has been something that I really thought Dekker did good that carried throughout the story. They didn't feel forced and you could really feel their connection. We also get to learn a little more about Darsal and Billos history and why she is so passionate in saving him. That was definitely a felt force in the short two-and-half-hundred page book.
Where the book really fell was the writing quality. From an author who has hardly ever had a published book not make a, if not multiple bestseller lists? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. However hard (or easy) it may be for you to believe, Dekker has just not been all there in this series. The reason I think this is, is because it is a YA book and he has less pages to write in and so he felt like he really had to rush his writing and sacrifice the quality. Whatever the reason be, it felt clunky in some places and just didn't really make me feel like I was reading one of the masters of the art, but rather a small-time author who just barely got the book contract. Feel free to comment on any thoughts you had hear.
If I were judging solely on the writing quality, I would give this book a one, maybe two stars, but because the character development and plot were considerably better, I give this book 3 Pens (stars).
