The Power of Six

What's inside (8 sections)

1. On the road after Ohio
2. Marina in Santa Teresa
3. Ella and the second ship
4. Back to Paradise and the lost chest
5. The caves in West Virginia
6. What worked and what dragged
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up The Power of Six because the first book left me annoyed in a good way. I Am Number Four ended with a fight at a high school and a death that felt too abrupt to sit with. I wanted to know where John was supposed to go next. It was first published in 2011 by HarperCollins, and the standard hardcover runs 406 pages. It is book two in the Lorien Legacies series. I read most of it on a couch with a bad lamp, staying up later than I planned two nights in a row.

The setup is simple if you read book one. Nine Garde kids escaped Lorien with nine guardians. Three are dead. John Smith is Number Four. He is on the run with Number Six, his human friend Sam Goode, and Bernie Kosar, the beagle who is really a shape shifting Chimera named Hadley. At the same time, far away in Spain, Number Seven is hiding in a convent and starting to lose patience. The book cuts back and forth between John and Marina. I liked that split right away, even when it made the middle feel choppy.

What follows is the whole shape of the story, including the ending. If you want to go in cold, stop here and come back later.

On the road after Ohio

John starts the book tired and guilty. Henri is dead. The fight at Paradise High left buildings burned and people asking questions. The FBI now has John's face on file and a theory that he is some kind of terrorist kid. Sam is with him because Sam has nowhere else to go. His dad disappeared years ago. His mom is alone. Six is with them because she is the only one who knows how to fight.

They sleep in motels that smell like old carpet. They pay cash. They change cars. Six pushes training hard. She can turn invisible and stir up weather, and she uses telekinesis like she was born doing it. John has the Lumen, light and heat from his hands, plus telekinesis and extra strength and speed. He is getting stronger but he is sloppy. Sam has no powers at all and hates feeling useless, so he runs drills and learns to keep watch.

Bernie Kosar was my favorite part of these early chapters. He sleeps across motel doors. He growls before anyone hears an engine. When a Mog squad finds them at a lonely house where they stop for a week, he is the first one up. The fight is fast and messy. Mog soldiers come with blasters and blades. Six throws them with wind and stone. John burns through one with his hands and feels sick after. They get out with the car shot up and Sam shaking.

After that John finally opens the letter Henri left him. He had been carrying it and avoiding it, which I understood. Henri writes plainly. He says Sam's dad, Malcolm Goode, knew about Lorien. Malcolm helped Henri and John settle when they first came to Earth. He was a friend, not a random conspiracy guy. John reads it twice and does not tell Sam right away. That delay causes trouble later, and it should. John is afraid Sam will run toward danger if he learns his dad was involved.

The group decides to go back to Paradise, Ohio. It sounds stupid. It is stupid in the way grief makes people stupid. Sam is sure his dad hid some kind of communication gear or notes in the backyard. John wants to see Sarah Hart once more. Six thinks both of them are being soft. She is right and also wrong, which is why I kept liking her even when she snapped at them.

Marina in Santa Teresa

Marina's chapters start slow on purpose. She is Number Seven. She lives in the Santa Teresa convent in Spain, a big stone place with cold halls and a chapel that echoes. She arrived years ago with her guardian, Adelina. They were supposed to train and stay ready. Instead Adelina gave up.

Adelina now acts like a nun first and a Cepan second. She tells Marina to pray, to study, to forget Lorien. She refuses to teach her how to control new powers. She says the goal is to stay alive by staying small. Marina is seventeen and furious in a quiet way. She scrubs floors. She helps with younger kids. She watches the sea from a window and feels her skin itch when she is near water.

Her powers come anyway. She can heal cuts and sickness by touch, though it drains her. She can see in the dark. She can hold her breath far longer than a human and move in water with ease. Telekinesis arrives in small bursts. A spoon slides. A door shuts when she is angry. She practices alone in a cave by the shore because no one will teach her.

She finds John by accident on the internet. The convent has one old computer the Sisters let the older girls use for school. Marina searches news stories about strange fires and destroyed schools in Ohio. She reads about a boy named John Smith who vanished. She knows. The charm means the Garde die in order, and One through Three are gone. News of Four fighting in public can only mean the war has started to move faster.

Hector Ricardo is the one bright spot in town for her. He is a human man with a drinking problem and a kind streak he tries to hide. He paints houses, jokes with the kids, brings Marina bread and oranges. He does not know she is alien. He knows she is lonely. Their friendship is careful and sweet. He teases the nuns. He tells her she thinks too much. When he gets hurt later, Marina has to decide whether to use her healing where someone might see.

Marina's anger lands harder because we felt the damp in those pages. She is not bored. She is buried.

Ella and the second ship

Everything shifts for Marina when Ella arrives. Ella is small, quick, funny, maybe twelve in appearance, with a sharp way of watching adults. She lands at the orphanage with a man who says he is her father. Marina notices right away that Ella stares at her too long and asks strange questions about stars and dreams.

Ella is Number Ten. She came on a second ship as a baby, too young to have a formal guardian. The man with her is Crayton, who looks after her and knows more about Lorien history than Adelina will say out loud. Ella can change her apparent age, a gift called Aeternus. She is older than she looks, and younger in experience than her memories suggest. That sounds confusing and it reads confusing at first, but Ella sells it. She acts like a kid who heard too many adult conversations and understood half of them.

Marina and Ella bond fast. They share bread at night. They trade stories about Lorien that may be memory or may be things Crayton told Ella. Ella says Lorien is not fully dead, that something might be saved. Adelina says Ella is filling Marina's head with stories. Crayton argues with Adelina in low voices in the hall. He says hiding is not a plan. Adelina says fighting got everyone killed.

Crayton brings what Adelina would not. He explains Legacies as tools that arrive with stress and need. He helps Marina practice telekinesis with stones. He tells Ella to be careful with her age shifting because it draws eyes. He also tells Marina about the second ship and why Ten exists at all. Nine kids left first. Ella left later, hidden, a backup the Elders hoped would matter.

Hector gets pulled closer here too. He drives them to town. He notices bruises and lies. He starts to suspect the new "father" is not what he claims. I liked how normal he stays. He does not suddenly become brave or wise. He keeps making jokes while looking scared, which felt honest.

The convent chapters build to a simple point. Marina has to choose. Stay hidden and obey Adelina, or train with Crayton and Ella and accept that hiding has an expiration date. She chooses training. Adelina watches from a doorway one night while Marina lifts stones in the courtyard and says nothing. That silence hurt more than a scolding would have.

Back to Paradise and the lost chest

John's return to Ohio is where the book gets tense and a little sad. They park outside Paradise and walk in like ghosts. Sam's house looks smaller than he remembered. The backyard has a shed and a fence his dad built. Sam digs where he thinks a box or device might be buried. John keeps watch with Bernie Kosar pressed against his leg.

Mogs hit them there. It is a short brutal fight in a normal yard, which makes it scarier than the big battles. A neighbor's dog barks. A porch light clicks on. Six throws a fence post through a scout. John burns another. During the scramble the Mogs grab John's Loric chest, the locked box Henri left with stones and tools and weapons keyed to Garde hands. Losing it feels like losing Henri again. John panics in a way that scared me. He does not think. He chases.

The chase leads near Sarah's house. John tells himself he will only look. Then he texts her. Sarah comes out fast, hair pulled back, eyes wide. She hugs him like she thought he was dead. For a few minutes the book turns into the romance from book one. They sit close and talk fast. She says the FBI came by. She says the school still talks about that night. John wants to stay in that yard forever.

He should not have gone. The FBI closes in while he is with Sarah. John and Sam get grabbed and taken to a federal building for questioning. John thinks Sarah gave him up. He goes cold toward her in his head, and I felt angry at him on her behalf. Sarah had always risked a lot for him. The book lets John sit in that unfair thought for a while before correcting him. It was an uncomfortable stretch, but I think it was meant to show how fear makes John stupid about the people he loves.

Six is furious when she breaks them out. She had been fighting Mogs while John went to see his girlfriend, and she says so in blunt words. She also brings news. She picked up some kind of signal pointing to Spain. She is sure another Garde is asking for help. She wants to fly there now. John says he will not leave without his chest. They argue in a parking lot with Sam bleeding from a cut and Bernie Kosar limping. It ends with a split. Six will go to Spain. John and Sam will go after the chest and the Mog base that took it.

I found this split effective. It raises the stakes without a speech. Two problems, not enough people, no good choice. Sam sides with John because of his dad and the chest. Six goes because she trusts the signal. None of them say goodbye properly.

The caves in West Virginia

The Mog base is in the mountains of West Virginia, inside caves that open into built rooms full of machines and cells. John and Sam get in by nerve and luck more than skill. They wear stolen gear. They keep their heads down. The air smells like fuel and wet rock. Guards move in pairs. Lights buzz.

Inside they see how big the Mog operation has become. Labs, holding pens, maps with pins. Sam checks every face for his dad. They find Loric chests stacked like loot, and John gets his back.

Then they find Number Nine. He is locked in a cell, thin and loud, with a grin that does not fit a prison. He says the Mogs took his guardian. He fights the second the door opens. His style is rough next to Six. John likes him and fears him at once.

The escape goes bad in the way these escapes always go bad. Alarms. Rock dust in the air. A ceiling that groans. Mog soldiers pour in. A big beast comes that Bernie Kosar meets head on, shifting to a larger form with teeth and claws. John uses fire and telekinesis until his nose bleeds. Nine laughs while fighting, which tells you a lot about Nine. They get out with the mountain coming down behind them.

Sam does not get out. In the chaos Sam is cut off and left inside. John screams his name. Nine drags John forward because stopping means dying too. I thought about that choice for a long time after I finished.

While John is under the mountain, Six reaches Spain. Mogs attack the convent looking for Marina and Ella. The quiet stone halls turn into a battlefield. Sisters scream. Kids hide under beds. Hector tries to help with a kitchen knife and pure nerve. Crayton fights with old skill. Adelina steps forward at last and uses power she claimed was gone. She protects Marina in the hall and dies for it. Her change comes late and it costs everything, but it reads as real remorse rather than a trick. She spent years afraid, then chose once to be brave.

Six arrives like a storm breaking a window. Invisibility, wind, stone, speed. She pulls Marina and Ella out through smoke and noise. Marina heals who she can while running. Ella shifts age to pass or to hide, small then older then small again. Hector survives but is hurt, and Marina has to leave him with the Sisters and a lie that will protect him. That goodbye is brief and rough. No long speech. Just blood on her sleeve and his hand on her shoulder.

The book ends with the groups still apart but aimed at each other. John and Nine are free and guilty and carrying chests. Sam is missing inside Mog hands. Marina, Ella, Crayton, and Six are together and moving. The Garde who are left have names and faces now. The feeling is less victory than relief mixed with dread. Six remain known to each other in the field, with Ten as a surprise, and the Mogs closer than ever.

What worked and what dragged

The split narration is the best decision here. Marina's slow chapters make John's fast chapters feel faster, and John's danger makes Marina's waiting feel cruel. Marina is also simply more interesting than John in this book. John broods about Sarah and Henri and Sam in circles. Marina notices the world. She watches how the younger orphans share food. She learns the sound of the chapel bell. When she finally fights, it means more because we saw what she gave up to do it.

Six carries the action. She is blunt and funny. Her fights are clear. I could follow where everyone stood. Nine arrives late and steals every page he is on. Ella is the heart.

My complaints are plain. The middle sags when John repeats the same worries about Sarah and Henri and Sam. Some dialogue sounds written rather than spoken, especially FBI scenes where everyone states the plot at each other. Sam's capture is powerful but the mechanics are blurry. I had to reread twice to track it.

The romance wobbles too. John loves Sarah but is drawn to Six, and the book does not fully commit to how messy that is. Sarah gets little to do except wait and cry and be suspected unfairly. Six deserves better than being a rival in John's head. She is a soldier with her own grief. I wanted the book to let John be confused without making the girls orbit him.

Still, the action payoff is strong. The convent siege and the cave breakout are vivid without getting gory for shock. Powers have costs. Noses bleed. Hands shake. Healing takes something out of Marina. Invisibility leaves Six pale. The Mog base feels like a real place with supplies and guards and bored evil, not a cartoon fort. And Adelina's last stand moved me more than I expected. A woman who chose fear for years chooses courage once, too late for herself, in time for the kids.

If you liked book one for speed, this one gives you more weight. It asks what running costs. It shows a girl told to be small deciding to be large. It leaves Sam in danger, Nine loose, and Ella revealed, which is a solid runway for book three. I closed it tired and ready to keep going. For a middle book, that is the main job, and it does it.

I would hand this to a teen who likes aliens and fights but also to anyone who wants a sequel that widens the world instead of repeating it. It is not tidy. It repeats itself. It still pulled me forward. When Six and Marina finally stand side by side in smoke, with Ella coughing behind them, I felt the title click into place. Separate kids, scattered and scared, starting to add up to something the Mogs should fear.

FAQ

When was The Power of Six published?

It was first published on August 23, 2011 by HarperCollins. The standard hardcover runs 406 pages.

Is The Power of Six the second Lorien Legacies book?

Yes, it is book 2 in the Lorien Legacies series, continuing John's story from I Am Number Four and adding Marina's chapters in Spain.

Who is Ella in The Power of Six?

Ella is Number Ten, a young Garde from the second ship who can change her apparent age, watched over by Crayton.