This book started really slow and I did not identify with the characters
or the situation. It was all about the psychology of being alone with
bare minimum supervision. The first part dealt with the preparation and
excitement of going into battle, and was the most difficult to read, and
took me forever to get through. When they get caught in the trap, they
go into a near-death spiral in part two, which was also difficult to
read, and my rating was going down. The third part offers a little bit
of redemption in my eyes, as the merging of the crews with the Brothers
was a great addition. The interaction with the aliens was at least
interesting, even if the long list of planets and their properties was
tedious. I wonder if the author managed to name all of the eighty kids
who crewed the ship. The list of names of who was where grew annoying
really quickly. Martin was a sympathetic character, even if he was
ineffective as a leader at the beginning -a role he grows into after he
gives up the position.
Spoiler review:
This book was so different from the previous one, even though its whole
being is due to the events that took place at that time. The complete
destruction of Earth by the mysterious alien beings was so horrendously
believable, as well as the various reactions of people, that it was a
very interesting read. This book is the complete opposite. The kids of
the survivors have been placed on a warship, something extremely
powerful that could destroy a solar system if necessary. They are left
to do nothing but wait, for years, as their ship accelerates towards
potential locations where the savior aliens, the ones that created
lifeboats for some cross-section of humanity, think the bad ones might
be.
Although the mom aliens guide the human children, who have
become horny teens at this point, they also bow to humanity’s decisions.
If the kids were to decide not to attack, then they would pass up a
target. If they decided to attack, the moms would configure the ship to
go all out. It’s a story about change, and paying for the sins of
previous generations. At the end of the previous book, it was said that
the destructive aliens had created decoy planets, and that they hid
because they had changed, and didn’t want to be judged for the actions
of their much earlier generations. It’s an interesting premise, but it’s
never explored.
The teens at this stage are being led by the son
of the main characters from the previous book. Martin is in a
relationship with another boy, and with a girl. He’s drifting away from
the homosexual relationship, and everybody knows it. Apparently they
were young enough when they started that they took the names of Wendys
(girls) and Lost Boys (boys), with their leader as Christopher Robin and
some Pans as a council. There’s nothing for them to do except work out
as an army team and have sex. People form cliques, as they would at that
age, but when a Christopher Robin makes a decision, they all obey, at
least until the stress is too much to bear. Sometimes the sex is
graphic, but not overly so. I just wish something in this first half of
their day-to-day lives was interesting.
Their first major hurdle,
where they come to their first potential target, nearly tears them in
two. They attack the solar system, because the evidence is that the
aliens who destroyed Earth came from there, from the spectra of the
materials, and other observations. There’s an interesting dynamic, as
well as a rise in the tension. Martin’s female partner dies in the attack when
the solar system turns into a trap to catch anybody trying to come after
the aliens, and they blow up the whole solar system. The spaceship
harboring the humans is crippled so seriously that the moms shrink it to
a single room so they can use materials and energy to repair it, at
least somewhat.
Through the first half of the book, Martin’s
foil was Ariel, an opinionated girl who refuses to follow Christopher
Robin. She’s a nice counter to all the decisions that are made, and
while she’s not a nice person, she does make a lot of good points. She
doesn’t have much of a role except to be Martin’s nemesis, and
eventually his lover in the second part, but she helps him through tough
times, and she’s not a bad character.
Here, Martin gives up
his leadership, and Hans is elected as Christopher Robin. They also meet
up with the snakelike Brothers, whose ship is also crippled. Looks like
the savior aliens have a habit of getting their revenge ships into a lot of
trouble. First contact with the Brothers goes as well as can be expected
among the crew. Some people are squeamish, others prejudiced right from
the start. Martin is accepting, as are some others. People are willing
to work with the Brothers, but in private it’s hard to get over how
alien they are, especially in their snake-like form. These are pretty cool
aliens, and raised the level of the story quite a bit. To form a
coherent entity, they need several snakes in very close proximity.
Individual snakes are pretty stupid. Under humanity’s curiosity, they
even form a huge entity to perform highly complex tasks. They have
a different, higher, math than we do, which is hard for many to
understand. But the ship and the resurfaced moms give them resources
that allow them to gain insight into higher functions.
In the
end, it all breaks down, of course, as one of the crew beats a snake to
death, and another group starts withdrawing because a girl hears voices
she thinks come from the aliens, before she is killed. The crew
fractures, and Hans also withdraws, taking aggressive stances from
behind the scenes that Martin doesn’t agree with, but can’t contradict
him because Martin himself withdrew from the leadership position. At
this point, they arrive at the second star system, which is extremely
advanced, such that each planet has its own function in the complex
ecosystem. Martin takes a small ship to make first contact and evaluate
if these are the aliens who destroyed Earth, while Hans stays far away
and prepares for an eventual strike.
There are so many aliens in
this solar system, as well as so many advanced technologies and superior
skills that it’s fascinating to read about. Unfortunately, we don’t
learn too much about it, just that they sound cool, before learning that
the aliens who destroyed Earth are there, but they have evolved way
beyond the bodies that we need, and have created this awesome community
of so many alien species. Yet they suspect that Martin and his crew are seeking
them. So Hans strikes first, and the whole solar system erupts into war.
There wasn’t that much interesting in the battle that played
out, as Martin is sidestepped when his ship is targeted, and he’s taken
out of the action by Hans. That’s probably a good thing, as it’s only
the result that matters. Humanity wins, and the awesome civilization
that existed in this solar system is completely destroyed. They are
innocent casualties in a war not of their making, like so many others on
Earth in our history. They were being used as shields.
I really
liked the way the morals were ambiguous. Martin thinks the civilization
didn’t deserve to die for what happened millions of years ago when their
ancestors sent out those probes. Hans thinks they did, because they’ve
already destroyed so many planets, and somebody has to pay. I can see
both points. What completely ruins it is the discovery of the
planet-destroying devices hidden away in the solar system, probably
saved in case the aliens needed it. If they really had changed, they
wouldn’t have kept the devices. It renders Martin’s opinion null and
void. I much preferred the ambiguity.
There were some high
points in this book, but they were hard to find among the dour and
uninteresting lives of these young people, the mundane fights they had,
and the lack of anything useful they did in the intervening years. Most
of the book was pretty boring, and the bad decisions they made weren’t
fun to watch. I preferred the emotions presented to a dying Earth in the
first book.
