Mission Hindenburg (39 Clues: Doublecross, #2)

by C. Alexander London

[sa090]

Been following this series since the first book came out in 2008 and I definitely want to see how it ends. I do think that it didn't need to go till now though, ending it right after the clue hunt would've been enough imo but I guess something successful has to be milked dry before it goes away. Either way 3 more books to go and hopefully the ending won't disappoint :smile:

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Because the "Outcast" is supposedly going to recreate 4 disasters it's not a big deal or an impossible event for the 4 books in this series to seem similar to each other. So the overall plot of the book was pretty straightforward and it leaves me interested to see what exactly does the Outcast want in the end (not sure if Ch. 33 is any indication but it seems like he wants an obvious thing), speaking of him even though I guessed the identity of the Outcast in book one based on the not so obvious hints, it's nice to see the suspicions confirmed in this one.

The main reason why this book wasn't as entertaining as I hoped was because of the characters, some of them felt like they had no relation to their prequel series' counterparts. Some more than others of course but it seriously makes me wonder how much time did C. Alexander London actually spent with the previous books before writing this one? From what I got, it seems like he didn't really try to be faithful to one of those personalities. Of course we can say that it's his way of developing a character but to me personally, this isn't really development, more like retrogression for one of them. Romance is another thing that annoyed me here, other authors also focused on it previously but it felt like he took it up a notch and gave me an unneeded reminder of A & J in "Unstoppable" and I personally don't think this is needed in a book like this.

These are my main issues with the book but other than that, I really appreciated that he didn't waste time getting to the main point. Instead of having them visit a few places before figuring out the actual place of where they needed to go, this time they headed there directly and I got to see very interesting action-y stuff. Like what jumping to conclusions could do in Hamilton's case, how not everything is at it seems with Ian's case, how the Internet could be useful in more than way one even though it's a bit far fetched with Dan's case, Sammy's quick thinking and of course the dark family secrets that I hope to learn more about.

This is the first book I read of his and I'm not that impressed with it but I'm still interested in the series as a whole so hopefully the next couple of authors deliver a more entertaining experience before I wrap up the series with him.

Final rating: 3/5