Just a quick note - I'm switching my original review to the omnibus edition, because that's what I read back in 2014 and, looking back, I realised I'd mistakenly reviewed the first volume instead. Anyway, this was what I wrote then:

Seriously dire, and its relentlessly episodic sequels aren't any better.

It's just so vacuous. Granted it's YA, but that doesn't mean it has to be so superficial. And the terrible, terrible pandering that goes on in it! YA often has wish-fulfilment tendencies but rarely are they so deeply, crushingly blatant.

Each of the main children have special powers and extraordinary eye colours (topaz, aquamarine, etc. - if you can get through them all without groaning you are a more tolerant reader than I). The central two also have dead or missing parents and are of course experts in some obscure form of martial arts. (I kept hoping Gwen would get at least as irritated as I was at Vic's constant "Sheesh!" and murder him with prejudice, but it was not to be. Alas.) That is not all of it. The Special Snowflakeness just goes on and on.

There was a brief moment of interest in the first book, where the bad guy was so thumpingly telegraphed that I felt sure the authors were pulling a fake, but no. The plot was as depressingly obvious and heavy-handed as the rest of it. I wouldn't have put up with this as an under-10, so it boggles the mind that older readers seem to be the target audience. I suppose I should say "at least they're reading" but really, that is a cold comfort. Surprising, too, as I've read a lot of Anderson and generally enjoy him.