UNDYING

In this companion and conclusion to
the duology that began with Unearthed (2018), two teenagers discover
shocking secrets about Earth’s supposedly alien invaders.

Leaving huge, flapping holes in
their story’s internal logic, Kaufman (Elementals:
Ice Wolves, 2018, etc.) and Spooner (co-author: Unearthed, 2018, etc.) bring brainy Jules and action-oriented Mia back
to Earth and, to give them further opportunities for steamy if chaste snogging,
send them on a long road trip from Catalonia to Prague with Jules’ flamboyantly
gay cousin, Neal. Meanwhile the advance guard of the Undying, all of whom
inexplicably look like brown-skinned human teenagers, touches off the invasion
by poisoning the water of select cities with a toxin that affects residents: “Like
they’ve…regressed or something, like
they’re Neanderthals.” (A concurrent plan to build portals on the surface for
Undying troops to march through just…floats away in the press of events.) In a severely
misguided effort to bring clarity to all this, the authors eventually lock the
main characters in a room with Dex, an invader with a secret, to unpack the
backstory. By the end, the course of true love has run far more smoothly than
the storyline. Jules is black and English, and Mia is white and American.

A hopeless muddle depressingly light
on credible elements or nuanced characters. (Science fiction. 14-18)