As a relatively new fan who has been reading through the novels for the first time (I just finished Voyage of Fear) I have to say that I am really liking them! I am not much of a book reader, so if the writing style is too “young” I wouldn’t notice.
I love the chapter of Tales of the Masks about Onua and Whenua. Onua is the kind of person that only speaks when he has something important to say, which causes some to think he is dim. But when he speaks, he is very wise. This time though, we see Onua sad about how he didn’t say something. He tries to convince himself that the team made a good decision in splitting up, but he doesn’t really believe it. He is sad because Gali, someone who was always kind to him, got after him for not saying anything about the team choosing to split up. It was a really interesting moment because up until that point Onua had not shown emotion as openly as the others, but under his kind silence was someone actually hurt by the things people said about him. Maybe I’m looking too far into this, though.
Another moment I really liked was in the climax of Voyage of Fear where Onewa falls into the lake, and Whenua, someone who’s most scarring memory was almost drowning and the aftermath of said drowning, jumps in the water and just barely saves both himself and Onewa. Meanwhile, Mavrah is just watching with slight awe. Whenua is too weak to get up, but Onwea has enough strength to talk to Mavrah. In this moment, Onewa’s sarcastic and bitter personality just work perfectly as he confronts Mavrah on all of his nonsense. Among other things, Onewa points out how the rahi aren’t defending Mavrah, they are wildly attacking each other and Mavrah has no real control. The sheer chaos of the fight between the rahi, toa, krahli, and vahki is written so viscerally, and it drives Mavrah into panic, which leads him to attempt to stop the fighting, only to be finally undone by what he tried so hard to control.
I got into the Bionicle because of the lore, marketing, etc. I wanted to learn more, so I started reading the books. But I kept reading because on top of such a rich world were stories, individual and collective, that were incredibly well crafted.