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See this item's eligibility during checkout.Health, Mind & Body | Home » » » The Supernaturalist (Golden Duck Awards. Eleanor Cameron Award for Middle Grades (Awards)) | | | | | | | Description: | | Fourteen-year-old Cosmo Hill longs to escape from the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys. When a rare chance to get away comes, he grabs it, but the attempt goes fatally wrong. He can feel his life force ebbing away, sucked out of him by a strange blue Parasite until a wisecracking gang of kids burst in, blast the creature and save him. They are the Supernaturalists, dedicated to ridding the world of these life-sucking blue parasites. When they realise that Cosmo has the ability to see these blue creatures too, they enlist him as one of them. Their mission leads Cosmo into a world of high-level corruption, James Bond type technology, thrilling adventure and finally back to a place that Cosmo ever thought he'd have to return...the dreaded Clarissa Frayne. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Eoin Colfer | | Hardcover:
| 272 pages | | Publisher:
| Miramax | | Publication Date:
| May 01, 2004 | | Package Length:
| 7.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.1 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.85 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 152 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 A Super DisappointmentOct 18, 2009
The Supernaturalist was a huge disappointment; I was expecting it to be quite good since I enjoyed the Fowl series of books by Mr. Colfer, and the reader reviews were generally good. But this novel seems to have borrowed everything that was good about Mr. Colfer's more popular series and taken it to the negative extreme. I will categorize it into characters, story, and theme:
Chacracters:
If you have read the Fowl series, you probably know one of the main reasons people like it is because of the main character. The Supernaturalist on the other hand has no such character, in fact there is no main character, although Cosmo Hill is clearly, like Fowl, intended to be. Both books focus on 2 characters, one clearly the main character who overshadows the other one for the most part, but throughout the entire novel, The Supernaturalist confuses who the main character is. Cosmo Hill is the first character introduced and the character the readers are made to get attached to, however, all the typical things that one would expect the main character of a novel to do, is done by Stefan Bashkir. "The Supernaturalists" would have been a more fitting name for the book. If I had any worse of a memory, I couldn't remember by the end of the book who the book was really supposed to be about. The main set of characters were bland, especially Cosmo Hill who unlike the other main characters didn't have even a single talent to set him apart from the rest; he seemed for the most part a liability and his only use was being lucky. If the main characters of a novel aren't likable the story and theme never really make up for it.
Story (POSSIBLE SPOILERS):
The setting, though done and redone many times in novels, had potential. That's about the only good thing I can say for the book, it had potential. But the dystopic science fiction setting was implausible, the technology at times was futuristic and at others barely, if at all, advanced. Some things were given too much description and other were left without any at all. Worst of all, no real reasons were given as to why the conditions that people faced were tolerated, why didn't the people simply leave the city and go someplace else? Was there nowhere to safely go? You won't get the answer from the book, in fact other than the city and it's surroundings, no other place was described, making the question all the more obvious.
The plot from beginning to end was the definition of predictable. Firstly, the blue creatures were actually good, but what was it that made the characters think they weren't? If you ask that question when you start the book, the main "twist" becomes blatantly obvious. There is no answer really, they thought so at first sight and never did the slightest investigation following it, instead taking the mad, vengeful, vigilante approach from the start. I guess they felt like playing hero rather than finding out what was going on. Then we find out that a member of the bureaucratic corporation controlling the city who the characters trusted, betrays their trust and tries to kill them. This too was predictable considering that the whole theme of the book was about negative impact of corporate control on society. It makes the character's look stupid for trusting the main source of suffering in the city. These were just the major ones, the pages are filled with predictable occurrences, boring humor, and bland characterization.
Theme:
A dystopia resulting from profit-minded regulation of society is fine for a kids or young adults novel (I am in the later category) if it's made plausible. No reason was given as to why and how much of the world had become like this other than a brief mention of a war that took place. It was clear that the book was a warning about corporate society but the characters never confront this situation. It was as if they were conforming to this clearly vile society and living their lives without any care. When even the characters don't really care, it ruins the overall message of the story.
Conclusion:
An interesting novel should have real character development, a plausible setting, a convoluted plot, and an understandable message/purpose. The Supernaturalist has none of these. It had potential and maybe if it was longer, it could have covered that which it lacked; at less than 300 pages, a lot seemed missing. The novel is supposed to be the first of a series, so may be later books will make up for it and make the series as a whole more interesting to read. I for one, might not actually read them, as first impressions are usually made with the first book, and my impression of it was rather poor.
Out of a scale of 1 - 10, 1 being "Don't read even if it's the last novel on Earth", 5 being "A waste of valuable time" and 10 being "It might be considered a classic one day", I give the book a:
2/10: READ ONLY IF IT'S THE LAST NOVEL ON EARTH.
 A good read.Oct 10, 2009
I am an Eoin Colfer fan. This was another good book. I'm really hoping there's another one. Good characters. I got this for my ten year old son but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it myself!
Get the audio version of the bookAug 23, 2009
Get the audio version of this book. The guy who reads it is terrific. The characters come to life quickly because of his voice. I truly wish Colfer would right a series about these kids. It was a great story line.
the supernatralistMay 12, 2009
The supernatralist
Have you ever wanted to see what it looks like in the future? Well if you have, read The Supernatralist it features, aliens, betrayal love, what earth looks like in the future, death I think the grim reaper liked the death part and oh yeah gun fights romance dwarfs called bartoli babies some one with a heavy metal alloy who can head but through a brick wall. The raiting a gave this book are a six star rating because it was better than the max rating and it ws very interesting.
The summary of this book is that there is a kid named Cosmo and he was born on a hill called Cosmo naught hill and he was put in an orphanage called clarissa frane. There is this marshal called marshal redwood and he likes to beat up the orphans and there is a character called Stephan and ditto and Mona.
I think that some of the characters are holding back on each other like ditto keeping a secret that the aliens are friendly and Stephan who was friends with Faustino a crazy woman and cosmo who was at clarisa frane.
Qjs
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Great Author --- Not His Best BookMar 15, 2009
Colfer is a brilliant and versatile author. In addition to the Artemis Fowl series, he has the Benny books, Airman (a Count of Monte Cristo tale), and Half Moon Investigations (a humorous hard boiled detective story). Each of those efforts is masterful, mixing entertainment with insight and understanding. The Supernaturalist starts out with promise, and Colfer does offer a Colfer-worthy dark, sci-fi vision of the future, but, beyond the basic premise, this book is not up to his earlier efforts. On my own, I would rate it a three star, but my 13 year old son, while agreeing that it is inferior to other Colfers would give it 4. He, more than I, was sufficiently engrossed by the teenagers-shoot-at-monsters-with-cool-weapons aspects that occupy a goodly portion of the book.
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