Review - Crisis Point and Power Surge

I've described Andy Briggs' books as "twin cannons" in the past; maybe not on this blog, but in real life. This time, I felt a little disappointed.

Crisis Point and Power Surge are the two new books in the Hero.com and Villain.net series of books, respectively, taking off where the last titles left off. There has been a huge difference in them though, or maybe I'm only noticing this now: Briggs repeats himself a lot! And I don't mean from one book to the next, or across the two books. I mean throughout a book, he'll mention a point two or three times. Now, I'm aware the books are meant for younger readers, and he may be trying to remind them of certain things (like his mad theory on time) but I don't think he gives the reader any credit. I felt insulted to be reading something over and over again.

The plot, I found, was still enjoyable. In fact, it was only the repetition that really got on my nerves. If you've read these books, you know what I'm talking about. Two people, one in each book, consistently pop up to cause a huge amount of trouble for the protagonists on each story. Over and over and over again I read about it, and it got a bit tiresome. Only in the case of a second character in Crisis Point did it make any sense to keep throwing her back in, the reason for which you do eventually discover.

What I love most about the books though, aside from the whole superhero theme and the downloadable powers, is Briggs' ability to write the two books side by side! They happen at the same time, so the events in one affect the other. This requires a lot of thought, because things have to match up, and it can get quite messy. With these two books, he pulled it off even better than before, when he would painfully repeat dialogue too.

So, they're worth the read, if you don't mind the repetition. And you can get through both books in a day if you really want to (took me a little longer, but that's a story for another blog post).

There's more info on the books at: http://www.whichsideareyouon.co.uk/

Note that you can just as easily only read one series and still get a pretty good story. I find that both together wraps everything up nicely though!