The Power of Five
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| Author | Anthony Horowitz |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Genre | Fantasy, horror, thriller |
| Publisher | Walker Books |
| Published | 2005–2013 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
The Power of Five (also known as The Gatekeepers in the US) is a series of five fantasy and suspense novels, written by English author Anthony Horowitz and published between 2005 and 2012. It is an updated re-imagining of Horowitz's Pentagram series, which the author had left unfinished in the 1980s. The series is published in the United Kingdom by Walker Books Ltd and in the United States by Scholastic Press. The novels deal heavily in the occult and examples of things such as human sacrifice and blood rituals are major plot elements, such as in the first book, where the protagonist, Matthew Freeman, is hunted by a Cult who want to conduct a blood sacrifice on him to blast open a portal using a combination of nuclear physics and black magic, to unlock another dimension which is holding a group of ancient evil demons captive.
The series focuses on five children: Matthew Freeman, Pedro, Scott Tyler, Jamie Tyler, and Scarlett Adams, a group of fifteen-year-old children, five modern day teenagers with some sort of power who are expected to defeat the Old Ones and save humanity.
Matt is the leader of the Five, and the main protagonist in the series. He was born in London, England, to an English mother and a father from New Zealand. However, after the death of his parents he went to live in Ipswich with his aunt, then York. He spent the first few years of his life growing up with his kind and loving parents. They were of comfortable financial stature, though they were not rich. On the morning of the wedding of a family friend, Matt claimed he was ill (when really what had happened was that he had had a premonition of his parents' death, and did not want to go with them, later regretting not trying to save them from their death) and was left with a neighbour, Rosemary Green, while his parents went. Matt reveals to the disbelieving neighbour the details of an accident in which his parents are killed. Afterwards a police officer arrived and informs them that his parents car has toppled off a bridge and that both his parents are dead. Mrs. Green is sick with shock.
Matt was fostered by his Aunt Gwenda and her partner, Brian Conran, who was abusive to his girlfriend and spent Matt's inheritance on luxuries. They then started to abuse and neglect Matt when the money ran out. His performance at school suffered accordingly and he soon fell under the influence of a local petty criminal, Kelvin Johnson, who encouraged him to start stealing, truancy, vandalism, smoking and petty crime. According to Matt, he started smoking at the age of twelve, and stole things from local shops.
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