Customer Reviews

4400: Promises Broken

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Following the events in The 4400: Welcome to Promise City, tension is escalating between the US government and Jordan Collier promicin-positive followers. And the 4400's greatest foe, the Marked, have devised a plan to wipe out the p-positive, but countless innocents will die as well.

David Mack and Pocket Books have finally given fans of the show the resolution we have been waiting for, since its untimely cancellation. The characters have changed and developed, but not beyond reason. And suspenseful as ever, this latest installment has Agents Baldwin and Skouris making the most difficult decisions of their lives. They must choose sides and risk everything. And, ultimately, Kyle's prediction of the fate of the world lying with Tom Baldwin comes to a head.

With all of the characters we've come to know and love, Mack has skillfully rendered each with believability and soul. The story is gripping and fast-paced, with a climatic ending that no 4400 fan should miss. And while there is a satisfying ending to the overall story arc, there is plenty left open for future accounts and other avenues to explore. This was a fantastic conclusion to an incredible series. And I, for one, would love to see it continue on in further novels, particularly if the same authors return.

As a huge fan of the series, I was disappointed when it was cancelled. However, the two 4400 books "Welcome to Promise City and this one "Promises Broken" did a good job of giving us a certain amount of closure, while still leaving us something to wonder about.
These are quick, fun reads. I believe that any fan of the show will enjoy both of these! Definitely worth the cost!

I'll make this quick and simple. The U.S. attempts to take back Seattle. The book is an escalation to a very exciting conclusion. The second story running parellal is the last of the marked making their ultimate weapon. My only complaint is how the ending is left open for other books. If they had not slipped in that last chapter it would of been perfect. Still if you like the 4400 you'll love this book. Hopefully more books will be on the way.

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across the two books which were written to conclude the 4400 tv series, and I was even more surprised when I found the books were very much true to 4400 form. All the main characters are there, and the interactions between them, and the forces around them are in sync with the tv series.

As for the plot, it is very much an escalation of the confrontation between the US government and promisin positive inhabitants of Promise City, re Seattle. I did have one qualm about this second book, but otherwise it's pretty good reading. I couldn't put it down to find out what happened next!

My qualms are that:
1. Jordan's about face on the use and spread of promisin seemed to sudden.
2. The very last few pages seemed like a very obvious attempt to get another set of books written. But how many times can the world be threatened? It's a bit like X Men and how Bishop time travels back and forth to secure a better world, only to find the new timeline he's created has it's own problems.

Overall Promises Broken and Welcome to Promise City are definitely required reading for any fan of The 4400 series!

This second book is even better. Really well written, we are left longing for more.

The author really managed to capture the spirit of the series and offers us - the fans - a very honest follow up to the cancelled show.

The end opens on something else so I hope they'll keep writing so that we can keep reading these very captivating stories.

Publisher please enable Test-to-Speech for the kindle editions!
Publisher please enable Test-to-Speech for the kindle editions!
Publisher please enable Test-to-Speech for the kindle editions!

If you liked the show enough to watch it to the end, you should definitely read this. I read none of the other books, and that did not hinder my enjoyment of this book at all. Because of the freedom that writing a book provides, the scale of the threat and the action were way above what you'd expect from an episode. Even with all the motorcycle chases, explosions, and disasters that threaten all of mankind, it still managed to be consistent to the show. It's far from perfect, but that can be said of The 4000 as a whole. I considered giving it a 4, because there are some wonky, unresolved time inconsistencies and the end is a little cheesy, but if you were a fan of the series, this really is a must-buy. It will keep you on the edge of your... whatever is it is you read on, the entire way through.

I wish I had known before I started that the ending was going to be left open for more books. Silly me, to think it would be anything *but.* I'm already hopelessly behind on Star Trek Vanguard, so why not The 4400?

Still, this wasn't bad. David Mack's in-your-face manner of writing kept it from becoming too dull. Already having a good idea of what the setting and characters "looked" like from the television series, Mack's words were easy to visualize as live action. Mack also included enough backstory to keep us (with weak memories for every single detail) reminded of who was who.

I'd say the outcome was predictable, even with its open end, but it was fun and entertaining getting there! What more could anyone want?

All in all, if you were a fan of the show, you'll like this book. If you were a Big 'ol Fan who wants to see it through to the bitter end, read it to the end. However, if you don't want to get sucked into what they're apparently calling the "Second Saga" of The 4400, I recommend you skip the final chapter (50).

Nice on the Rush T-shirt. Did Maia borrow that from Mack himself? Hee.

Spoiler level: Medium - High (both for this book and for "The 4400: Welcome to Promise City.")

I know I can always expect two things from a David Mack book: a lot of action, and a high body count. After reading his "Star Trek: Destiny" trilogy, I also knew he had the ability to tie many different plot points together brilliantly. So after tearing through "The 4400: Welcome to Promise City," I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Promises Broken.

I was still a little shaken, however; after Greg Cox's character-rich "Welcome to Promise City," David Mack's arc-heavy follow-up feels a little jarring. Especially the radical switch in philosophies between Kyle Baldwin and Jordan Collier. In "Welcome to Promise City," Collier is still willing to sacrifice half the world's population to make the other half promicin-positive, while Kyle still believes him to be an honorable man who would never force promicin on anyone. And while this is true on the face of it, Collier is more than willing to sit back and let others do it for him.

However this book picks up "a few months" after the previous book, and right off the bat we see their perspectives have changed; Collier realizes he's headed towards a shooting war with the US government. As a result, he's decided his previous philosophy was wrong, and is now willing to try to live in peace with promicin-negative people. Kyle, on the other hand, has been guided by his promicin alter-ego Cassie into believing war is the only answer. We saw him start to be lead down this dark road in the previous book; he was resistant to it then, but now he's completely embraced it. Each book works just fine, and the two perspectives work fine together when you can accept that time has passed between them, but reading them back to back made me feel like there should have been another book in between the two to show us their reversing in philosophies more gradually.

That aside, the book is a non-stop action ride as everything between the US government, The 4400 Movement and the Marked all collide, bringing the entire 4400 series to a satisfying conclusion. And just like the series, it ends raising the stakes with the potential of taking the series to the next level, and opening some new doors if they decide to publish any more books.

Which considering that this book was published in October and nothing new has been announced since then, I don't have a lot of hope of any more books coming at this point... but hope is still there. And if not, if this is truly the ending of the story of The 4400, then it's a good one. Many thanks go out to David Mack, Greg Cox and Pocket Books for making it happen.

I really wanted to like this book, and for the most part I did. I felt that the story fit really well, discussing the inevitable war between Promise City and the US government. Overall, I feel that this book is a nice resolution to the series that I have come to love. However, parts at the beginning and the end of the book really took me out of the story: Diana swearing, that really came out of nowhere for me, and the shipping at the end: I really did not see that happening SPOILER: I am not a Tom and Diana shipper, and I for one liked the series because it was never about that. Also, what happened to the guy that Maia said Diana was going to marry? It doesn't fit.