The Soldiers of Halla - D.J. MacHale **Ahemm there may be some spoilers in here, so BE WARNED**I feel … disappointed. I mean – come on, there are TEN books. That's a lot. You'd think it would all be building up to something pretty fepic. But it just DIDN'T!! This one, to me, felt really repetitive and too fast-paced, to the point where it started wandering and was just plain boring.It was like, DJ MacHale spent all this time adding more and more questions to the series and then … "Oh, crap. It's the last book. I actually have to explain stuff." So all the explanations felt really lame and forced.I also noticed that each book seemed more and more careless than the last, especially by ohh the seventh book or so. It seemed like a series that ... thought it was better than it actually is, I guess you could say. It was like, "Well, I've written a bunch of books in this series and people generally like them so I'm going to stretch it out for as long as possible and not really care how well it's written or what happens in it." Because first of all – DJ MacHale can't really write. At times his writing is pretty cringe-worthy. He writes like a thirteen-year-old who's trying to write well – lots of adverbs, lots of use of the passive voice. And his dialogue is really awkward – and most of the book is pretty much dialogue, sooo ... yeah. He has this weird habit of refusing to just say something simple like "I said". It has to be "I exclaimed", "I scolded", "I questioned", etc. And yes, while I do appreciate variation in these "dialogue words", MacHale crossed the line; he was trying waaaay too hard. Not to mention that his word choice is really strange at times. It's like he doesn't understand the words he's using; I get the feeling that he's sitting there with his thesaurus and isn't getting synonyms that mean what he really thinks they mean ...As for Bobby – I really started to dislike him. He was much more likable when he was a clueless little kid – but he still had that funny, sarcastic tone and all. I didn't like him once he started getting all "serious". And by the last book he was so confident in himself, like Oh, yeah! I'm such a badass! He just wasn't compelling anymore. That cute aspect of his character – the one that readers could relate to more – just, like, vanished. He turned into such a boring, flawless character. So, in this book I didn't really feel like I was rooting for him. I just wanted to rip his head off. Now. Character relationships ... Ummm well, lemme start off by saying that I didn't really have much of a strong preference. Which is bad – I'm supposed to care, right? Whatever. Okay, so I kind of liked Loor and Bobby together. How would they have ended up together? I don't know. Shut up. But Loor is really cool. She kicks ass. And yeah, I like Courtney too. But through the whole series, it seemed really illogical to me that Courtney and Bobby would end up together. I mean, they saw each other a total of like ... what? five? six? times in the whole series? Alright, probably more than that. But you get what I'm saying. Maybe I'm insane, but I thought it would have made more sense for Courtney and Mark to end up together. I mean, they spent all that time together reading Bobby's journals and whatnot. It totally would have made sense. Or at least it could have added a little drama like "Ooooh my best friend stole my girlfriend!" Yeah. That would have made it a bit more interesting. But ... whatevs.Sooo ... THE ENDING. Umm. Ummmmmm ... Well the VERY ending was kinda cool. Like, the very last page. But the general ending was ... ugh. I was hoping for something totally epic. You know, like some huge fiery battle with all the Travelers there, kicking ass. YEAH! But all we really got was Bobby and Saint Dane punching each other like third-graders for like ten pages. FAIL. And then they just stop and go outside and Saint Dane's followers all happen to be like "Yeahh ... We hate you now. And we deactivated all your evil robots. So, you fail. Haha." And he's like "Noooo" and disappears ... ?! That's all I get???!! WHAT? What happened to him being all scary and evil and undefeatable and whatnot? You know, I think that's why there's a problem with creating a really scary villain – if you're going to kill him/her off, it must be epic. Because if he/she just like randomly falls over and dies, it's so lame. It's like, what was the point? Why did I drag my way through ten books? Goddd ...And the rest of the ending was such a cliché. I hate endings that tell me everything that happens to the main characters "afterwards". Like, "Ohh and then we all grew up and got married and got old and died! the end!" I love an ending that leaves some room for imagining and hoping, you know? And while I thought the ending was sweet, it didn't leave me with that satisfied feeling. It just wasn't ... good. I know a series has a good ending if, say, I cry because it's over but I'm happy with the way things turn out. I know a series have a bad ending when I stare at the last page saying "What the f***?" and then throw the book across the room. Guess what I did with Pendragon #10? :PSo, basically, I did not like it. The series as a whole was okay ... But as it went along, it just died. And none of it was really tied up in the end. Sorry that was so long. I had no idea I had that much to say about it. lol. :D