Night Runner (Night Runner, Bk 1)
Author:
Genres: Children's Books, Teen & Young Adult
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Children's Books, Teen & Young Adult
Book Type: Paperback
Night Runner is a book filled with lots of potential, but that reads much like one, long preface. Obviously the first in an intended series, author Max Turner spends much of the book setting up the premise of the story and providing world-building, filling lots of pages with dialogue and the internal musings of the narrator. The real action of the story is confined to the last 50 pages or so, and even that receives the classic cliffhanger treatment.
Fans of vampire YA lit will probably enjoy Night Runner simply based on the merit of the genre, and to be fair, the book does kick off with a slightly different spin than many other novels along the same vein. 15-year-old Zach has lived in the Nicholls Ward -- a mental hospital -- since he was only 7. After recovering from a mysterious childhood illness that left him in a coma, he is now confined to the hospital to protect himself from a blistering allergy to the sun and acute sensitivities to food -- in fact, he can only drink the special strawberry shakes the doctors prepare for him. Orphaned, Zach has no family and takes comfort only in the companionship of his troublemaker best friend, Charlie, and Nurse Ophelia, his night caretaker at the facility.
Zach's routine of reading, sleeping and running on the treadmill is interrupted one day when a homeless man crashes a police motorcycle into the hospital and tells Zach to RUN! From that point on, Zach is forced to reassess everything he knew about his life and the people he trusted. Someone is hunting him for reasons he doesn't understand, and Zach must rely on both old friends and new to help him escape.
Much of what happens in Night Runner is pretty predictable -- especially for readers familiar with the genre. The characters are somewhat shallow, and could benefit from some further developing in future books in the series. There also seemed to be a general lack of emotional maturity in the book. This may have been deliberate on the author's part -- the narrator is a 15-year-old boy, after all -- but it only served to further alienate me from the characters I was supposed to be caring more about as the book went on. The "romance" that developed later in the novel also seemed very pat and undeveloped -- almost like the author thought, "Hey, this might appeal to more teenage girls if I threw some love into my vampire story. I mean, it worked for Twilight, right?" I don't feel like readers know anything about the girl that's the subject of the narrator's affections, and it doesn't seem like the main character does, either, so it just didn't do anything for me.
Overall, Night Runner was a pleasant, quick read, but not a book I'd rank among my favorites. I will probably seek out future books in the series casually, but without much anticipation.
Fans of vampire YA lit will probably enjoy Night Runner simply based on the merit of the genre, and to be fair, the book does kick off with a slightly different spin than many other novels along the same vein. 15-year-old Zach has lived in the Nicholls Ward -- a mental hospital -- since he was only 7. After recovering from a mysterious childhood illness that left him in a coma, he is now confined to the hospital to protect himself from a blistering allergy to the sun and acute sensitivities to food -- in fact, he can only drink the special strawberry shakes the doctors prepare for him. Orphaned, Zach has no family and takes comfort only in the companionship of his troublemaker best friend, Charlie, and Nurse Ophelia, his night caretaker at the facility.
Zach's routine of reading, sleeping and running on the treadmill is interrupted one day when a homeless man crashes a police motorcycle into the hospital and tells Zach to RUN! From that point on, Zach is forced to reassess everything he knew about his life and the people he trusted. Someone is hunting him for reasons he doesn't understand, and Zach must rely on both old friends and new to help him escape.
Much of what happens in Night Runner is pretty predictable -- especially for readers familiar with the genre. The characters are somewhat shallow, and could benefit from some further developing in future books in the series. There also seemed to be a general lack of emotional maturity in the book. This may have been deliberate on the author's part -- the narrator is a 15-year-old boy, after all -- but it only served to further alienate me from the characters I was supposed to be caring more about as the book went on. The "romance" that developed later in the novel also seemed very pat and undeveloped -- almost like the author thought, "Hey, this might appeal to more teenage girls if I threw some love into my vampire story. I mean, it worked for Twilight, right?" I don't feel like readers know anything about the girl that's the subject of the narrator's affections, and it doesn't seem like the main character does, either, so it just didn't do anything for me.
Overall, Night Runner was a pleasant, quick read, but not a book I'd rank among my favorites. I will probably seek out future books in the series casually, but without much anticipation.
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