Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen

Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen by Richard Paul Evans is the second book in the Michael Vey series. It is an engaging story and drew me in a lot faster than the first book, but it is rather violent for a children’s book series, and some of the violence even bothers me. I think it is mainly the fact that the children (not the main characters) are truly bad and don’t seem to have a conscience. I’m not used to that kind of callousness from teens. If you had a problem with The Hunger Games and the children killing children, you will have a problem with this book series. (Although, this book is much better written than The Hunger Games.)

I do want to point out that in this series, the “bad children” have been brainwashed by Dr. Hatch. They have been conditioned from a young age to believe they are superior to everyone because of their electric abilities and to see nothing wrong with taking lives. The good children – Michael Vey and the Electroclan – were not “broken” (that is the term used in the first book to refer to the process that Dr. Hatch puts the children through) by Dr. Hatch because they were older and had a formed conscience. As a result, these children rebelled against Dr. Hatch and joined Michael to form the Electroclan. So it is not that the “bad children” are intrinsically evil, it is how they were “raised” by the evil Dr. Hatch.

Anyway, the scenes with Dr. Hatch and his gang of bad children is too violent for me, and this is not a book series I am going to finish reading. It is one that I would cautiously recommend to people who don’t get quite drawn into the lives of the characters as much as I.

P.S. I do like that one bad kid in the first book had a chance of heart, and that there are signs in this book that a couple of the other “bad kids” are coming around. So I think there may be potential for some character’s to re-deem themselves, but since I’m not finishing the series, I won’t know.