Jared,
I read the first book in this series right before we started the blog and it was really good. Definitely a 4/5 star. With the 3rd book coming out in a couple of weeks I figured it was time to dive back into the series.
Title: The Siege
Series: The Six; Book 2
Author: Mark Alpert
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Young Adult
ROTS Setting: CU, Near-Future, AI,
Synopsis: Adam gave up everything for a new chance at life. Now with a cutting-edge digital mind, he is smarter, faster, better than a normal teen. Except Adam is anything but invincible. He’s indebted to the government program that gave him this ability-and freedom comes at a price. Adam and his teammates, the six Pioneers, swore to defend humanity against Sigma, the most ruthless artificial intelligence program ever designed. The Pioneers are all that stand between the AI and world domination. But Sigma has an advantage. It has learned about human weakness, and its new weapon? Betrayal. In this war between good and evil, the battle lines have been drawn…but someone is about to switch sides.
Recommendation: This series is recommended.
In the first book we are introduced to Adam and his fellow Pioneers, teenagers who had their minds transferred into robots. Of course things aren’t easy and when something threatens the survival of our species the Pioneers are the best shot we got.
The plot of this book is pretty good. There’s a good pace while also building the action and anticipation well. I do think the climactic events near the end radically change the premise, so it threw me a bit at the end but I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing yet. I’ll probably need to read the next book to figure it out.
Something that struck me was the impression that the author isn’t trusting the reader. For example, we’re told something directly from the narrator only to have a character make a point of saying it too.
This leads directly to my big issue, the characters. Pretty much every interaction between the characters felt stiff and wooden. So basically all the dialogue. It was really distracting and I had a really hard time connecting with the characters because they felt fake. Whether is was friendly banter or an argument it felt scripted, and for maximum drama too.
In summary, it suffered from SBS, second-book syndrome. The characters and plot suffer, and while it’s not a bad book it’s comparatively worse so the reaction is intensified. I’ll probably keep reading the series, but I’m not in any hurry.
Robert
Links- Mark Alpert’s Official Website
