Lost: Signs of Life – Frank Thompson

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Again, this book took place during the first season of Lost, though it didn’t include the crash like the others did. This one includes the motifs of art, dreams/visions, and ghosts.

Thoughts:

I liked that it actually added to the Island mysteries, as opposed to Endangered Species, which was basically about a jungle adventure. I liked that, unlike the other two books, it actually incorporated the show characters into the actual plot instead of using them as props to frame the scene and convince us we were in Lost. However, it does miss out on the use of original secondary characters on the Island, which Hapka’s works at least tried to do. Besides that, it annoyed me that Jeff spent half his flashback time sleeping around, which I consider especially wasted space because he’s otherwise the most developed and realistic of the three books’ main characters. The most obvious flaw in the book, though, is its serious need for editing. There were many technical errors, like referring Jeff as Jack within the book and Nick on the back cover blurb, of all places. There were times when the author did things like suddenly jump between character perspectives or break from the Island-flashback-Island chapter structure. Then there was the ending. Just like the Return of the King movie, this book suffered from several false endings after the climax. All in all, this book had more promise than the other two character-wise and plot-wise, but it comes across as a very unfinished product.