Review: Some improvement...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2013
As the title implies, the main story line centers on (our hero?) Justin Slade's mother. As the novel begins, Justin is feeling good, having survived the recent past episode, having completed his semester, and is preparing to send Christmas invitations. Of course, Justin's feelings are fleeting, as a series of unfortunate events moves him towards focusing on recovering his mother, in captivity by the Seraphim Daelissa (and Jeremiah Conroy). Events unfold, and Justin (and the audience) finds there may be bigger players than the light & dark "angels". Justin's mother is eventually recovered, which leads to a race-against-time to free her from her "shackles" before she dies.The "improvement" -- the past episode, book 5, had Justin dying, with his only hope being to release & learn his own "magic". So, of course, he's sent to what amounts to "grammar school" to learn with the extremely young rather than a mentor which could move him forward much more quickly -- a situation balanced between the ridiculous, and the absurd.This episode is more realistic and complete, with a reasonably good ending, and a story which (somewhat) moves the overall plot along. I'll agree with other reviewers that mention that the plot & Justin's growth seems all too slow, and that the author appears to be "milking" his audience.Justin remains a "whiny drama queen", and girlfriend Elyssa catches "the disease" at times, though there is some improvement. Justin also remains a self-centered adolescent, with his primary intent to return his family to how things "use to be" (though this time including his sister & girlfriend). The Audience is looking for Justin to grow, to broaden his perspective, and to realize that a person "can never go home again" -- both home, and the person, has changed.The author also shows Justin with a great deal of anger towards his mother and father. A part of this feeling may be his self-centered adolescence -- while Justin was being raised, any attempts in informing him of his heritage would have caused more damage. He was short & chunky, intent on his fantasy world with foam swords, etc. When events forced his family to break up, he wasn't ready to hear anything -- just ready to be angry at everyone causing his "world" to break apart.Part of Justin's future growth should be a realization and acceptance -- this book shows at least partial recognition (with his mother), and hints at reconciliation with his father...Another somewhat interesting "revelation" is of Justin as a "born leader". Certainly Hitler had his charisma, and I suppose we might call the first lemming to break for the sea a "leader" -- neither are leadership abilities, and Justin really hasn't shown any "leadership", beyond his first attempts at realization of responsibility during a ley worm incident later in this book.Along with leadership is a constant reference to Justin's "conscience", not wanting to be responsible for killing anyone, even his worst enemy. I did note that his "conscience" didn't extend to "noms" that might have been injured, etc in his "mother recovery" incident...All-in-all, an improvement. Unfortunately, with the proverbial "forest" growing with the new & larger players, we still find Justin & friends "clawing at the same trees". It's about time that they begin recognizing "the trees for the forest"...