The Last Star

Well, I am glad this is over with. Where do I even begin to start with this book?

Firstly, I have to say that I loved this series at the beginning. The first two books were both on my Top Ten Books of 2015, and I was excited to see what was going to happen in the final installment. While I will admit that the premise was not exactly the most original in the genre of Science fiction, the biggest selling point that Yancy had was atmosphere and character motivations. You just could not tell if the characters trusted what they were saying and the atmosphere that was back dropped behind them made this all the more real.

The Last Star is, well, about as far a departure from all of that as it can be, without it being a different novel entirely. We still have the same characters, the same motivations, and the same situation as the last two books, but everything has been so stripped down that I seriously debated on just putting this on my could not finish shelf and leaving it there.

So why do I not like this book so much? Well, on major problem is the writing. Before the philosophical prose about how things used to be different before the alien invasion made sense in the first book, and got annoying in the second. Here, it is used almost every other paragraph, even during action scenes, so that I lose track of what is even happening in the story. It also makes me want to look at the audiobook and scream “MOVE ON DARN IT!!!!!” I know that stuff used to be different before all this happened, big whup, who cares? Get onto the part where you blow up some aliens! The purple prose gets in the way of everything, and made this book seem like it took a million years to read, when it should have taken no time at all.

Then there is the fact that I listened to this on audio. Now, I don't think this is the fault of the actors, but they just sound like they were told to be as bord as possible while reading this. Also, they got two readers, one male for Ben and Evan, and one female for Cassie and Ringer. The problem is that this means I constantly had to tell which character was which when the woman was reading for Cassie or Ringer. I often lost track of who said what, and what POV we were in, especially when Cassie and Ringer are in the same room together and their POV's are back to back.

The romance in this book should not have been there. It begins at the start of the novel, and leaves a bad taste all the way through. I think this could have been done without it. Also, the ending was dumb, but considering how it had been going though, I'm just glad it is all over with,

So, I hate this book so much more than I should because of how much potential this series had when it came out, and how much it has fallen from grace. If this were a standalone novel, or the first book in a series, I would normally give it a two out of five, but I can't ignore how much I liked the first two books, and despise this one. Therefore, I give this book a ONE out of five. Learn from my mistake and leave this book alone.