Undying

by Amie Kaufman

Overview

Earth's fate rests in their hands. Trapped aboard the Undying's ancient spaceship and reeling from the truth they've uncovered, Mia and Jules are desperate to warn their home about what's coming.

After a perilous escape, they crash-land on Earth's surface but Jules and Mia can hardly fathom their new predicament: No one believes them. Because the threat against Earth is hiding in plain sight.

A mounting global crisis is taking shape, starting with a mysterious illness that seems to reduce its victims to a regressed state. Jules and Mia have no choice but to take matters into their own hands, escaping custody of the International Alliance in order to reunite Jules with his father, the disgraced expert on the alien race, whose research may be the key to saving humanity.

From the mountains of Spain to the streets of Prague, the epic conclusion to the Unearthed series is a white-knuckle ride that will keep readers guessing until the final page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781484799826
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Series:	Unearthed Series , #2
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	601,030
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	930L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner are longtime friends and sometime flatmates who have traveled the world (but not yet the galaxy), covering every continent between them. They are sure outer space is only a matter of time. Meagan, who is also the author of the Skylark trilogy, currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Amie, who is the coauthor of the Illuminae Files, lives in Melbourne, Australia. Although they currently live apart, they are united by their love of space opera, road trips, and second breakfasts. You can find them on Twitter @AmieKaufman and @MeaganSpooner.

Editorial Reviews

"The action-packed save-the-world plot is underscored by the protagonists' more relatable concerns about saving their family members, and revelations about the Undying provide a layer of complexity to an otherwise light sf adventure."— Booklist

Accolades
Hypable: Winter 2018-2019 movies, TV, and book release dates you can't afford to miss, selection

PRAISE FOR UNEARTHED

"A literally breathtaking archaeological expedition. Spooner and Kaufman prove once again that no one does high-stakes adventure shenanigans like they do."— E.K. Johnston, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Star Wars: Ahsoka

From the Publisher

02/01/2019

Gr 9 Up—Jules Addison and Mia Radcliffe, heroes from Unearthed, are unwilling stowaways on the alien spacecraft they were forced to activate in the previous book's conclusion. After discovering that the Undying race—previously thought extinct—are alive with plans to decimate humankind, Jules and Mia must survive on the ship long enough to return to Earth and warn the International Alliance of this new danger. When their arrival and desperate pleas are met with suspicion and outright disbelief, Jules and Mia must rely on themselves to save the world from the invasion. Fast-paced action, danger, and romance fill this overly plotted sci-fi tale. Jules and Mia remain likable, believable teens thrust into situations that slowly erode their hope for the future. A reveal about the true history of the Undying echoes the interesting world-building of the prequel, but otherwise the plot feels overly convenient with constant narrow escapes and more telling than showing. The quick, bow-tied ending wraps so quickly that readers may wonder if they missed something critical along the way. VERDICT Purchase only where Unearthed is very popular.—Kelsey Johnson-Kaiser, St. Paul Public Library

School Library Journal

2018-11-12

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)

Kirkus Reviews

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