Pretentious reviews: The Rise of Nine

OK. So. One of my favourite characters in this series is not actually in this book. And still, this is my favourite so far.

'The Rise of Nine'. That in itself is probably the coolest title they've done so far; it's much more awesome than 'I am Number Four' and it's less trying-too-hard than 'The Power of Six'. The actual book itself is good as well, at least, as far as this series goes.
We have the book focussing on two particular storylines, mostly: John (Number Four), Nine and Bernie Kosar the shapeshifting dog thing being on the run from Mogadorians and federal agents, while simultaneously figuring out their next move, and Six, Marina (Number Seven), Ella (Number Ten) and Crayton (Ella's mentor thing) searching for another member of the Garde.

John's storyline is far easier to sum up than the other, so I'll do that first: He finds out Sarah may not have actually given him up to the FBI, argues with Nine, goes back to where Nine used to live, fights with him some more, they bond, then they work out where they need to go - by using a tablet he found in Paradise last book to locate the others.

Six and co.'s story is a little more involved. They first go to India, where they meet a bunch of soldiers who take them to someone they believe to be a god, Vishnu. This turns out to be Number Eight, who joins the group, finds his chest thanks to Marina, and takes them to a giant stone in the mountains. While there, Mogadorians attack, and Crayton is killed.
And I totally called it. Grown-ups are like the red shirts of the Lorien Legacy world.
Anyway, the stone allows Eight to teleport them (eventually) to New Mexico. For some reason, Six is separated from them in the teleport. Six manages to get into the Mogadorian base, where she finds Sarah who isn't actually Sarah, but Setrakus Ra, the leader of the Mogadorians shapeshifting into Sarah. Six gets caught and thrown into a cell with the real Sarah who reveals she definitely didn't rat John out. Six escapes and goes and fights Setrakus Ra. Naturally, she gets beaten pretty quickly since Ra is the ultimate boss fight at the end of the game, and our main characters aren't even halfway through the game. They're practically noobs in comparison. She gets turned to stone by a whip (you didn't know whips could do that? Yeah, me neither) and attached to the ceiling. As you do.
Fortunately, John and Nine have arrived in New Mexico and met up with Marina, Eight and Ella, where they proceed to free Sarah and go on to fight a bunch of Mogadorians, John finding he can make fireballs with his lumen powers. They find Six, who turns out to be Ra (you'd think Sarah might have warned them he can shape shift? It's heavily implied he used it to try and make her talk) and he stabs Eight through the chest, fulfilling his death prophesied by wall carving, that was shown in the cave where the big stone was. Because of course, prophecies of doom make a book cool, even when we have no idea where they came from and why they were carved.

Setrakus Ra takes their legacies away, and he and his men start to beat them pretty badly in the fight, until Ella is somehow able to reverse the process and allows them to get their legacies back. Yay, plot convenience! Maybe they'll explain in a later book. Marina heals Eight, John discovers his own powers of healing when Sarah and Ella are injured, and Setrakus Ra escapes. The group vow to win the war, or something, and the book ends.
I
 have to be honest, I looking at that I wouldn't have expected to enjoy the book so much - particularly given the lack of Sam Goode, one of my (at the time I began reading this book) two favourite characters. He makes a brief appearance in a dream sequence John has, but that's about it. I think it helped that Nine is so predominant in this book, and his character is arguably the most interesting and dynamic of the Loric characters. He seems like the stereotypical tough-guy, but the author manages to balance that out with enough explanation on his part as to why he behaves that way, without doing it so often that he loses all credibility as a tough guy.
Marina's almost hero-worship of Six was kind of interesting, and has possibilities, but they seem to focus more on her feelings for Eight - who is himself a decent character in his own right, I guess, but I'd like to see Marina get past her feelings of inadequacy so she can stop going on about it, and having the only reprieve of that being her fancying Eight is not what I had in mind. I'd quite prefer her to move through it, show it develop rather than staying in the same place. Ella is a kid. That seems to be more or less her personality. Moving on. John is still fairly dull, but he seems to be maturing as a character at the very least, and the fact that Six seems to realise that Sarah really loves John hopefully puts an end to that stupid (and pointless) love triangle.

It's odd that I enjoyed the section with John and Nine more than I did the stuff with Six, Seven, Eight and Ten; I guess it's because there was less going on plot wise and fewer characters to take up page space that allowed for greater character development. I still enjoyed the other storyline, and when the two converged was probably the coolest thing I've seen so far in these books.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys anything to do with this series. The dialogue is still clunky, and the narration still lacking - but the action is till awesome, some of the concepts are cool, and a few characters are actually somewhat interesting. I definitely hold that it's the best so far, and while I hope we get to see Sam next book, as long as it keeps being on a similar level of quality as this, or higher, I should be happy.