Book Review: The Colossus Rises

Book: The Colossus Rises (Seven Wonders book #1) by Peter Lerangis with illustrations by Torstein Norstrand and Mike Reagan

Source: Library

Rating: 1 star (Did Not Finish)

Review:

I read up until the 18th chapter before giving up. I really wanted to like this book especially since I like fantasy adventure series like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, and surprisingly many readers compare this book to the Percy Jackson series. However, I could not image comparing this book to Percy at all, that would be like comparing apples to onions (with The Colossus Rises being the onion). This book is really, really boring with lackluster characters.

The story began with 13 years old Jack waking from a terrible dream only to realize he's going to be late for school and to add to that his dad is calling via Skype. He barely ended his call with his father before getting dizzy, seeing his son in poor health his father who was Singapore saying he's going to book a flight back to Indiana.

Before Jack could leave, he finds out his live in babysitter has quit (there has been several others who have quite as well). What annoys me is the reader doesn't find out why his father is away perhaps he couldn't deal with the death of his wife (which the reader doesn't know how or why she died). The other thing that is annoying is why do all the babysitters keep quitting, the story doesn't give the reader any detail at all.

Continuing with the story, as Jack arrives at school he finds himself dealing with a bully when he starts to pass out, he then wakes up in the hospital to hear his family physician talking with another doctor about Jack seems to be suffering from a rare disorder. Then the other doctor and a mysterious chaplain do something that causes Jack to be sick. Then the next thing you know Jack wakes up in another facility that some where on a remote island. 

After meeting three other 13 year old kids (Marco, Aly and Cass) and then trying to escape, Jack is told he as well as the other three kids are descendants of the people from Atlantis and they may develop powers. In order to prevent their deaths they have to go on a quest to find seven lost objects.

This story was so boring that I stopped reading it. This is a slow moving story that tries to be an action packed suspenseful story however, nothing really happens. I feel like this story suffered from too much over telling and not enough showing.

There's also no character development other than telling the reader about the characters special skills which are: Marco the ultimate jock , Aly the computer genius, Cass the geography genius and Jack the inventor. The characters were just so one-dimensional, they weren't fleshed out and have no personality. They also have no descriptions aside from Aly's bright pink hair (which was as far as the descriptions went). I had no connection to these characters because they never became anything more than one-dimensional.

I didn't feel like waiting around until they finally left to go on their quest. There was so much potential here but it feels like the story never had a good foundation to build on. It's a boring go nowhere story with equally boring characters.