The Three by Sarah Lotz

Little, Brown

With an endorsement by Stephen King on the cover, this book is sure to sell. But don’t be fooled. What starts out as an interesting premise embedded in a format that could be mind-blowing turns into a plodding narrative with characters that are drawn with surprisingly less skill than is needed.

The idea is that four planes crash on the same day. From three wrecks there is one survivor each, and each survivor is a child. Thus on the face of innocence are we supposed to read dread and danger. And there is of course the “missing” survivor, the child who survived the last plane crash but who was whisked away before any officials arrived at the site.

Early on the author’s ability to handle so many different character perspectives shows through. It goes from being mildly annoying to, as the number of voices grows, being too difficult an issue to overlook. The fact that the plot doesn’t really move forward and instead relies on endless teasers of things readers have already figured out doesn’t help.

2 stars

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