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Sons of Destiny

2006Darren Shan

4.1/5

This review contains SPOILERS.Worst ending to a series, EVER.I was so enthusiastic for these novels. Darren Shan presented a whole new world in his first books. He caught the attention of the reader immediately.I've read a few reviews that said that from the 2nd trilogy the series started to decay. I absolutely disagree with this statement. I NEVER considered it boring, at all.Truly, for the "Great finale" I was expecting something big, surprising, an epic fight, a shocking ending. Instead of that, Darren Shan gave us a dull, unrealistic and forced "novel".First of all, the title "Sons of Destiny". Was I the only one who KNEW (and without reading any spoilers) that Darren was the son of Mr. Tiny? Or was the title REALLY obvious? A huge mistake, especially because at the beginning it is openly written that the mysterious character was name Des Tiny (yes, for those who hadn’t guessed yet).I think that Mr. Shan gave us some shocking scenes while the story was moving forward, but there is a tiny line between some INTERESTING plot twist and a DULL, STUPID and FORCED twist when the author ran out of ideas.Along the whole series I bore the "childish" dialogue, and sometimes understood the context of it. But in this installment (if the author didn't know) there is A WAR happening. His resources were null. There are more important things to describe in an "epic fight" than how the “girlfriend” of the main character looked like.Oh, yes, "the fight". In the past volumes we had some pretty amazing fighting. So, I (as a constant reader) was expecting something even bigger. I mean, there were vampires and vampanezes all around the world. Their future was about to be sorted out in just a fight. If you habitually read those sentences throughout eleven novels, OBVIOUSLY you are expecting something ENORMOUS for the twelfth. And what did Mr. Shan give us? A pathetic, wretched and almost funny "fight" (more like a diminutive version of a concentration camp) in a stadium. The Vampire Mountain would have been a much better scenario for those scenes.When you keep using some elements in your novels, the reader habituates to them. They’re part of the world. But in this novel, several external elements were introduced, so it turned into a "non-credible" world anymore. Yes, it's a fantasy (pseudo "horror") series, but the author has to stick to what he has written throughout eleven installments. I liked the novel until the middle of it (except for the "epic fight"), and Darren dying in the river would have been a very good ending. But the author found it too short and got us into the literary nightmare of the more than 100 additional pages that he had to write to have the approval of the publishing company.Yes, I know that he had to complete the circle to fit it to the beginning, the idea that it's the "real" Darren Shan starring the story (evidently, nobody who is sane would ever believe that), but it could have been done in a better way. Actually, that premise could have been dropped before he published the very first novel of the series, changing the name of the main character, telling the story in 3rd person. So, we MIGHT have a better ending here.Finally, I have read a few 5-stars reviews from this very same page. And I just have to say... PLEASE, don't trust them. The plot twists are not as good as some people describe them. As I said before, they were forced at the point we got out of the magnificent world the author created. It almost seems that the author spitted grotesquely several ideas that he had for other stories, mixed them up, put them the name of "Sons of Destiny" and published it. Not a good thing. Is this a good series? It's AMAZING. It's addictive. Sometimes well written, but above all, very entertaining.Is this a good book? No. The dullest ending to a franchise ever.It truly deserved one star.

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