Review: Good Start to a New Series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 2, 2012
Troy awoke to bright lights and a voice in his head.  The command was simple-RUN.  But run to where?  Run from what?  Where was he and how did he get there?  With his environment crumbling around him he had no options except to obey the voice.  However, as he soon learned, the spectacular room he awoke in was unlike any other in existence, for it knew his weaknesses and adjusted accordingly.  Alone, with only the voice, Victoria, Troy began the arduous task of trying to escape the device known only as the corridor.The first thing I noticed about this book was its length.  It's very short, at only 182 pages.  Even for a young adult novel, that seemed incredibly short to me. I was a bit concerned that perhaps some character development or descriptions were omitted in order to fit the plot into such a condensed space. That turned out not to be the case. It's short because the plot limits the length of the novel. This book is an excellent launch-pad for a new series; like a warm up to a much bigger story. However, because of the overall design, Corridor had to be short in orders to keep it interesting.Like most of Parrish's books, Corridor follows a single storyline. In this case, the events are limited to Troy and Victoria inside the corridor. My personal preference leans towards multiple plots and a wide variety of characters. However, Parrish manages to pull off this story even in the limited setting and with only two characters. The story works exceptionally well, but I think I would have liked it even better with a couple of extra storylines and the ability to know some of the characters `personally' rather than through Troy's telling of them.Two chapters into Corridor, I became concerned that trying to escape the corridor was going to be the extent of the novel. Fortunately, the next chapter proved to give a much needed break and provided some much needed answers. I can only accept the `what's going on' suspense for a limited amount of time and though this book somewhat pushed my patience in this area, it did start providing answers before I became frustrated.For the most part Corridor relies on action and thrills, but given the difficulty of maintaining interest through physical challenges, this book needed strong characters. I had to like Troy or otherwise I wouldn't care what happened to him.  Parrish does a nice job of making both Troy and Victoria interesting so that they are able to add depth to the story.  While there were some characters mentioned `off screen' that I wanted to know about, this book was able to meet my need for character development.Overall I'm pleased with Corridor.  I think it makes an excellent beginning to a series, but I am hoping for more plot diversity in future books. While the ending makes it obvious that there are more books planned for the series, it doesn't leave the reader completely hanging, but there are plenty of questions left to be answered.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this series progresses. It looks to have some great potential.