Given how super formulaic these books are, I was actually really surprised with how good this one is. You have a (very) old arms family with a flare for the dramatic, the lost city (no, not that one, this one), killer … algae?, all the Edgar Allen Poe and The Island of Dr. Moreau references you could want (plus some!).

Man there are some awesome action scenes in this book (which is really a large part about why you read them). Escaping from the castle? Excellent. (Actually the whole castle scene leading up to it was delightfully creepy). Escaping from the island? Even better.

Overall, I had vaguely considered giving up on this series after the last few, but this one is more than good enough to keep me going for a while longer. Onward and NUMAward!

A random side note (spoilers!):

So… why in the world didn’t they test all three doses… and how did Austin know?