WWRW: Percy Jackson Wannabe Falls Short.

Seven Wonders Book 1: The Colossus Rises by Peter Lerangis looks like a book I would love, and judging from Amazon's blurb and the quote from Percy Jackson creator, Rick Riordan (which you can read if you click on my affiliate link), I should love it.

But I don't.

There's a lot of very good marketing that went into this book, but not very much good writing, plot development, or character development.

Thirteen-year-old Jack passes out at school one day and wakes up in a facility on an uncharted island.  Yes, the plot moves this fast.  Lots of unanswered background questions.

On this island, he is supposedly being kept alive by "treatments" from the Karai Institute people who are supposedly the good guys.  I am not certain of this though, and neither is Jack.  Will we be more certain by the end of Book 1?  No.

Jack needs treatments because he has a special gene, one that he inherited from his mythological ancestors from Atlantis, one that will give him a superpower some day, one that will kill him if he doesn't get the treatments.

Jack and the other lucky kids who have this gene and are also being held at this facility, must find the missing pieces (loculi) of the power source of Atlantis to be permanently cured.  These pieces are hidden in the lost Seven Wonders of the World.  This plot development is not revealed until more than halfway through the book, though based on the title and cover art, it was a given all along.

After reading this book, and Jack's adventures with his three genetically similar friends, eluding the other organization that wants control of the loculi, the Massa, I'm not convinced that the Karai people are good and the Massa are bad or vice versa.  I can't tell who has a good motive.  The only motive I'm clear about is that everyone wants the lost powers of Atlantis, but I'm not sure why.

There is so much about The Colussus Rises that is just bizarre.  One of the teens dies, but is miraculously brought back to life by mist from a waterfall?  Huge mythic creatures are let through a gap in (I guess I would call it) a space-time continuum and no one can stop them?  The kids at the Karai Institute are not allowed any contact with their parents.  Why?   Jack's only superpower thus far seems to be a telepathic connection with people and events from the fall of Atlantis, so there are some disjointed dream sequences where Jack takes on the personas of different characters in the past.

There is nothing objectionable in The Colussus Rises.  I'd let my middle-school age kids read it if they wanted to.  I just don't get how all of the pieces of the plot fit together.

I blame poor craftsmanship.

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