Rating: WORTHY!
In this volume, which I was able to launch into right after finishing volume two, the runaways were pursuing a decoding of their parents' secret book, and finally finding out how this all began and where it was going. They discover that their parents are taking part in a ritual under the ocean in front of their alien overlords, and decide to ship-wreck it. Since I laid out the details of this series in my review of volume two, this review will be shorter.
This story was slightly less entertaining than the previous one, but still worth reading. There was some annoying stuff wherein the only interactions between these guys, despite being on the run, hungry, and scared, was of a romantic nature. Yeah, I get that teens often can think of nothing else, but this group was composed mostly of females, and given their circumstances, it seems to me they'd be less focused on romance than on survival. That said, maybe when young people are as hunted and desperate as these guys were, they might well tend towards a more profligate approach to romantic behaviors - like that girl in the Airplane movie?! Who knows? The thing is I could see guys doing this a lot more readily than girls, and this is written by guys!
In addition to this there was this (as another reviewer termed it) "random vampire" thrown into the mix which came right out of left field and served no purpose that I could see. The more interesting thing was the increasing reference to a mole amongst the runaways. I never did guess who it was, but it's revealed towards the end of this volume and plays out quite well. Given this, I didn't see the point of another character (the vampire) who has his own antagonistic agenda.
Both Tony Stark (in a suit) and Steve Rogers (in costume) put in an appearance, and I liked that the Runaways were as suspicious of Captain American as he has been of Government and SHIELD. Overall, though, this was a nice read and I plowed through it in short order. At this point I was interested in reading more of these although they're not really aimed at my age range - more at middle grade despite the Runways being mostly young adult ages. The problem was that later stories in this series were far less impressive to me than these early ones, and I am done following the Runaways now.
