YMMV / The Power of Five

• Complete Monster:
  • Chaos, the King of the Old Ones, is the one ultimately responsible for everything in the series. Ten thousand years ago, Chaos and the Old Ones emerged and nearly wiped out all of humanity. Sealed away by the Five Gatekeepers, Chaos would re-emerge to bring more death and destruction with the intent of killing all of humanity as slowly and painfully as possible, with attempts such as trying to poison everyone in Hong Kong; causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis; wide-scale famines; and backing brutal dictators. Chaos also has a special hatred of Matthew "Matt" J. Freeman, seeking to brutally torture him for decades, all because Matt wounded him once.
  • Raven's Gate: Sir Michael Marsh is a well-respected nuclear scientist who is secretly the leader of a cult devoted to the Old Ones. Convincing the British government to build an experimental nuclear reactor and then not to tear it down when it closed, Marsh began to slowly rebuild it to use it to free the Old Ones. Marsh then had one of his cultists take Matt in under a foster program, with the intent of sacrificing him in a ritual to free the Old Ones, and engineers the reactor to have the largest possible meltdown it can have to destroy most of England.
  • Nightrise: Susan Mortlake is one of the Chief Executives of Nightrise, and is Colton Banes and Kyle Hovey's direct superior. When they and report back to Susan Mortlake that Jamie escaped them, she concludes that one of them has to die and has Colton strangle Kyle. She then takes Scott Tyler to a Hellhole Prison where she and Colton torture him into helping them assassinate a Senator, analyzing his cries of pain like a symphony. She has him mind control the senator's bodyguard into killing him, so that the death will not be linked back to Nightrise.
  • Oblivion: The new chairman of Nightrise is introduced by holding a press conference with ten thousand members of Nightrise, and says that they will be taken away to have their limbs cut off and replaced with weapons for the battle with the five. When one member refuses, the chairman has him shot dead before sending guards in to beat everyone up and take them away by force. The chairman orders his second-in-command, Jonas Mortlake (Susan’s son), to make Scott do a Face–Heel Turn so that without him, the five will never be united, telling Jonas that if he fails, he will suffer the same fate as the other members of Nightrise. When Matt and Richard are captured, the chairman has Matt crucified and tortured by having his skin flayed and his bones broken. The chairman tries to kill Richard in front of Matt, stating that Matt will be Forced to Watch his best friend die, and will than continue to be tortured forever.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Richard Cole and Lohan - the latter because he's a badass Triad assassin who nevertheless is heroic and honorable, and the former because he's the exact opposite - but no less badass. Even Horowitz has admitted that they're his favorite characters.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Matt's story is suspiciously similar to the life of Jesus. Born with special powers according to some higher plan, destined to save the world from The Legions of Hell and their very Satan-like leader, leads a small group of followers of whom the closest to him is named Pedro ('Peter' in Spanish), accepts his destiny despite wishing there was another way, betrayed by one of his companions, flogged and beaten and hung up to be jeered at, died, came back and ascended to Heaven right in front of his friends.
• Iron Woobie: Matt, once he learns that his destiny is to be tortured by the Old Ones and given a Mercy Kill by Richard and still manages to keep going.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • In "Evil Star," Morton is arrogant at first and is too greedy to just give the heroes the dangerous MacGuffin, and instead demands money for it. However, he really does want to keep the item out of the hands of the Old Ones, and not only is he targeted by their assassins, but the book causes him to view everything and everyone around him as a dangerous enemy, while making his own household items come alive and attack him. By the time he meets Matt, the man is on the verge of emotional collapse.
  • By the final book, Scott is The Quisling, and is brooding, violent, and resentful of the others for poor reasons. However, he's also an abused orphan who has been subjected to Mind Rape in the recent books, and ultimately feels a lot of guilt for his actions.
• Nightmare Fuel: By the bucketloads. The violent deaths of most of the villains are only the least of it. Listing all the scary things in Necropolis and Oblivion would basically just be a recap page.
• Stoic Woobie: Matt again, by the last book. Also Pedro, who never really complains despite being a starving street urchin who spends most of his pagetime being hunted, abused, betrayed, nearly killed on several occasions and repeatedly exhausting himself trying to use his power on grievously-injured people who often don't make it anyway.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Of the twelve leaders of the Nexus, most of them pretty interesting characters, only two of them both of whom die, appear in Oblivion while a third suffered from a case of Dropped a Bridge on Him during the Time Skip. Making this even worse is that while one of those two is Big Good Susan Ashwood, the other is a literal Ascended Extra who was present at the meetings but never spoke or was specifically described during the previous books. The most blatant example of this trope is the unnamed Bishop, who could easily have appeared during the scenes set at the Vatican and either provided some minor aid to Pedro or provided a case of Dramatic Irony by being unaware of his presence. This is somewhat mitigated by the implication that the other leaders of the Nexus are out there, rallying support for the World Army, but Horowitz still could have done more with them.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The Old Ones vote Republican. No, really.
  • Horowitz never says which party is which, only that the guy under the control of the Old Ones (Baker) is the nominee of one of the major parties and Trelawney is the other's. It could be interpreted either way: the environmental and social justice stuff make the Old Ones sound Republican, while from a religious perspective they're more likely to be backing the Democrat. However, several hints do favor this interpretation, most notably that the anti-Old-One candidate, thinking the security he's surrounded by, notes that only one crazy person with a gun is enough to make it necessary, that it is very easy to get a gun, and he might want to change this. That's a much more likely set of thoughts for a Democrat than a Republican.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The books are fairly scary and deal with some fairly adult themes.

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