The Dark Planet: Reviewed by a teen

The Dark Planet by Patrick Carman

He was so proud of him and all that he’d done, proud enough to never call him his maker again.

The Dark Planet is the conclusion to Patrick Carman’s Atherton trilogy about a young boy, Edgar, and his adventures while finding out who his father really was. Along the way he makes numerous friends on Atherton, and the Dark Planet itself. He knows he was made for a purpose, he knows he doesn’t have real parents like everyone else, he knows his maker went to a great deal of trouble to save a handful of people on a made world. What he doesn’t know is that his adventures aren’t over yet.

The Dark Planet is written nicely. The characters are deep, the settings detailed, and the plot very well thought out. The main problem I found was that the first two thirds of the book went too slowly. You could see that plot developing, but it was getting nowhere fast. It was not, in other words, thrilling.

However, the last third of the book was stupendous. The plot tightened up, the characters came alive, there was edge-of-your-seat action, suspense, and at the end the feelings flowed out of the characters and it was hard to tear my eyes off the page. The beginning: boring. The end: awesome.

A good conclusion to a lovely trilogy, especially the conclusion of the conclusion.