I Am Number Four, the first in a six-book series written by the surprising pair of newcomer Jobie Hughes and memoir-fabulist James Frey under the pseudonym Pittacus Lore, is startlingly opulent. It's a bit of a shame, then, that all this money spent in search of the next big teenage crossover smash has gone to a perfectly decent action-adventure that firmly refuses to be anything more. Number Four is 15-year-old John Smith, his most recently chosen name in a life spent moving house every few months and constantly changing his identity. He is one of nine Garde who secretly came to Earth as children after the destruction of their home planet, Lorien, by the evil Mogadorians. The Garde develop superpowers in adolescence and are trained by their adult "Cepan" in an effort to one day retake Lorien from the Mogadorians, who are still avidly searching for them.
Fortunately for everyone, Loriens look human, and after a move to extremely rural Ohio, John starts the process of fitting into a new school yet again. This time, though, he's starting to feel like a real teenager, which means catching the eye of pretty Sarah and also the unwanted attentions of Mark, high-school quarterback and Sarah's former boyfriend, who wastes no time in jealously tormenting him. But John is threatened by greater dangers than just bullying. Each of the nine Garde were numbered and bound together by a charm. They can only die in the order of their numbers, and as I Am Number Four opens, Number Three has just been killed. The Mogadorians will be coming for John now, just as his superpowers–called Legacies and, frankly, pretty arbitrary in nature–start to make themselves known. Will he be strong enough to fight them? Is it time to go to war?
I Am Number Four is written with energy and fluidity. It moves at an impressive clip, and though it's essentially just a collection of action set-pieces, it's none the worse for that, even if logic and clarity tend to slip in the later sequences. That slippage points to a larger problem. The forward momentum isn't enough to disguise the fact that very little time seems to have been spent on the backstory. The science is laughable (everything from planetary sizes to evolution seems to have been written down as a best guess), until finally the writers just give up and call Lorien "magical". Why are these aliens with superpowers bound by amulets and charms? Because they are, that's why. I Am Number Four is a competent and entertaining thriller, but it has no deeper resonance, a resonance which was key to the runaway success of both the Harry Potter and the Twilight series. Even John's teenager-as-alien allegory doesn't work, because he's handsome and confident, with superpowers and a beautiful girlfriend. Which is what teenage years were like for everyone, weren't they? (guardian.co.uk)