This book picks up a week or so after the group initially escaped Vosch's camp, with them hiding out in an abandoned hotel while Cassie waits for Evan, although he is believed by the other group members to be dead.
They all know they can't stay there as Vosch and his army of brainwashed kids will be looking for them, along with the fact that winter is coming and they will freeze and starve to death where they are now.
Ringer says there is a network of caves not far from their location that they could stay in for the winter and she leaves to go scout it out to see if any other survivors are there. Teacup takes off after her and when she sneaks up on Ringer, Ringer thinks it's a Silencer and shoots her. She hears a helicopter coming and runs out to meet it knowing it's the enemy and they will take them back to camp just so that they will save Teacup.
The book switches to Evan's POV, and after collapsing while trying to get to Cassie after the explosion he wakes up in a cabin with a woman named Grace, who turns out to be someone Evan had met when he was younger after he was first "awoken" in his body and he found out she was an Other too.
Grace asks who Cassie is as he was mumbling her name but he doesn't want to talk about her since he knows Grace despises humans. He stays with her for a while to try to act like he's on her side while recuperating from his injuries and come up with a plan to get away from her. He knows that if he doesn't kill her she will follow him right to Cassie and the others.
There is a space mobile hanging above the bed in the room he's in, and when Grace attempts to seduce him he takes the wood from the mobile and hits her with it over and over again. Thinking he has killed her he takes off but she awakens and follows him.
He makes it to the hotel but knows that if he just walks in they'll kill him as he's too weak from his fight with Grace to be able to confirm his identity before they shoot thinking he's an Other (well, he is, but you know what I mean, a bad Other).
After he knocks Ben out, he sees Cassie's little brother and starts to head toward him so he doesn't shoot him but Cassie comes up behind him and knocks him out not knowing who he is. After realizing it's Evan she bandages his wounds and tries to nurse him back to health like he did for her.
A little girl shows up who turns out to be a friend that Cassie's brother made while they were at camp and Evan tells them they can't get near her as an IED is implanted in her throat that is programmed to be detonated when enough CO2 is present, and that this is what Vosch had been using all the little kids for that were too young to be made into military. He would drop the kids off at known survivor locations, and when the adults would find them the CO2 of their breath would detonate the IED.
Cassie performs surgery on the little girl and manages to get the pill like IED out of her and they place it in a baggie. They plan on getting CO2 canisters from the convenience store near them and placing the canisters and the IED in the elevator shaft so that the slow leak will cause the bomb to go off after they are a safe distance away, making Vosch think his plan worked.
Grace shows up before they have the chance to do so however, and when she attacks Cassie they all fight back and she barricades herself into one of the rooms in the house. Evan convinces Cassie to leave with her group as he knows it's only him that Grace is interested in for the moment and that she must have orders to bring him back to Vosch since she's taken so much effort to follow him.
When they leave, Poundcake is being carried by Ben, as during the fight with Grace he was shot. They realize Poundcake isn't going to make it and leave him behind but he makes it back to the house and finds the baggie with the IED and sacrifices himself by breathing on it to make it go off and kill Grace while she's in the house with him and about to finish him off although she sees he's already dying.
It switches to Ringers POV, and Vosch is keeping her hostage at one of his camps (not the same original camp of course since it's been blown to smithereens). He tells her he's going to run an experiment on her and he injects her with an enhancement serum.
*****ok, so I'm confused on this part and I'm not sure I'm interpreting it right, but hopefully I am. If you think differently please let me know******
He reveals to Ringer that there were never any aliens, that the people like Evan and Grace were really just enhanced (like she is about to be) by other humans like himself and were brainwashed into believing they were Others.
It's never explained though why humans would even do this to wipe out all the rest of humanity or what, so I'm not sure if there ARE aliens behind all this or if it really just is some human scientists who took it upon themselves to clear out the world. Big old question mark on this part of the book for me.
Ringer escapes with the help of Razor, her caretaker while she's been recuperating from the enhancements. She has fallen for him and they develop a kind of code through chess where he tells her he's going to help her escape.
Turns out that was just a lie too, because after the escape he leads her right to Vosch in a barn where he says he's hiding Teacup. She tries to kill Vosch but fails and Razor stays there with her. This is another part I'm confused on....why does she stay with him if he turned her in to Vosch? How could he have been forced to do it if they had already escaped? Did Vosch recapture him while he and Teacup were trying to meet up with Ringer after the escape?
Anyway, after they do some hanky panky he tries to convince her to run but she won't do it knowing that Vosch has Teacup so she goes back to the base to get her. Vosch meets her there with Teacup and tells her she will be his weapon now or Teacup will die. Razor then shoots Teacup and tells Ringer that she has no excuse now and she needs to run. Vosch shoots and kills Razor and Ringer takes off.
The book ends by going back to Cassie's POV. She has told Ben that they are going to the cabin that Grace was staying in under Evan's directive, as he said that there's a pod that will drop there with supplies for when Grace was staying and if she can find a way to put a bomb in the pod when it's sent back up to the mothership (another thing I'm confused on, if there's no aliens where the heck did the mothership come from?) that she'll be able to end everything.
Cassie once again thinks Evan is dead but she sees him come limping towards them from the direction of the house and she goes to meet him.
End of book 2
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder review
I've read The Fault in our Stars 3 times now, but even on my first reading of it I didn't cry because I felt like I knew what was going to happen before it did (don't get me wrong, I did tear up, I just didn't let loose). The movie was another story. I was crying so hard watching it that I couldn't even breathe.
This book was the same as that for me. I felt the waterworks coming on, but everything ended so abruptly that the sad part was over before it even began. I really hope they make a movie out of this so that I may have the same reaction as I did to TFIOS movie. To me, it's not a good movie unless it can make you weep like a 2 year old that wants a toy and his mom won't get it for him.
I did love the book though. I read the reviews on the back from other authors talking about how funny it was, and I was like "how can a book about a girl with cancer be funny?" but I ate my words pretty quickly. When the part about the donkey falling out of the U-Haul came up I was laughing like a lunatic and my fiance looked at me like I had lost it. I've always been a sucker for a sarcastic sense of humor that matches mine and this author definitely has that.
If you loved TFIOS and want something similar then definitely pick this up. Just know that although there's a love story and it's great, it's no Hazel and Augustus.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
This book was the same as that for me. I felt the waterworks coming on, but everything ended so abruptly that the sad part was over before it even began. I really hope they make a movie out of this so that I may have the same reaction as I did to TFIOS movie. To me, it's not a good movie unless it can make you weep like a 2 year old that wants a toy and his mom won't get it for him.
I did love the book though. I read the reviews on the back from other authors talking about how funny it was, and I was like "how can a book about a girl with cancer be funny?" but I ate my words pretty quickly. When the part about the donkey falling out of the U-Haul came up I was laughing like a lunatic and my fiance looked at me like I had lost it. I've always been a sucker for a sarcastic sense of humor that matches mine and this author definitely has that.
If you loved TFIOS and want something similar then definitely pick this up. Just know that although there's a love story and it's great, it's no Hazel and Augustus.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Friday, September 12, 2014
Opposition (Lux #5) by Jennifer Armentrout review
This was a good ending to the series as far as the wrap-up of the characters, but honestly, I was just bored most of the way through the book. Same old overprotective Daemon, same old paranoid Katy, same old 50 gazillion pages of nothing but "Oh, Daemon, I love you so much, your eyes are like blue frisbees floating across a park while the sunlight hits them"...and no, that's not a direct quote, but you get the gist of it.
For a YA novel, I feel this book was much too risque, and if my 14 year old daughter hadn't read it before me, there is no way I would have let her read it had I known the content. The other books were pushing the limit (for YA), but nothing like this. Every few pages seemed to be more 50 shades of grey than the Lux series I originally came to love.
Sex scenes are described with little left to the imagination, and I really didn't feel any of it was necessary to the story other than the wedding day love scene. I really think Armentrout should have taken cues from John Green or Stephanie Meyer with how to write a love scene for a young adult book. With their novels, you know what's going on without every action being described in detail, and with theirs, sex comes across as love, rather than the way Armentrout portrayed it....as love coming across through sex. What kind of an example does that set for teen girls?
Daemon went from being the "holy crap, I wish I was a teenager again so I could crush on this guy without looking like an old weirdo", to making me feel like an old granny shaking her head because he was constantly referencing something sexual to Katy, even in the most tension filled times and I became completely sick of it.
All around, if you want to know what happens to the characters, I say go ahead and pick it up, but otherwise I would veer far away from this mess of a book, and I especially wouldn't let kids under 16 read it.
I'm going to go read The Fault in Our Stars now so I can renew my faith in young love after this wreck. See you at the next review!
2 out of 5 stars
For a YA novel, I feel this book was much too risque, and if my 14 year old daughter hadn't read it before me, there is no way I would have let her read it had I known the content. The other books were pushing the limit (for YA), but nothing like this. Every few pages seemed to be more 50 shades of grey than the Lux series I originally came to love.
Sex scenes are described with little left to the imagination, and I really didn't feel any of it was necessary to the story other than the wedding day love scene. I really think Armentrout should have taken cues from John Green or Stephanie Meyer with how to write a love scene for a young adult book. With their novels, you know what's going on without every action being described in detail, and with theirs, sex comes across as love, rather than the way Armentrout portrayed it....as love coming across through sex. What kind of an example does that set for teen girls?
Daemon went from being the "holy crap, I wish I was a teenager again so I could crush on this guy without looking like an old weirdo", to making me feel like an old granny shaking her head because he was constantly referencing something sexual to Katy, even in the most tension filled times and I became completely sick of it.
All around, if you want to know what happens to the characters, I say go ahead and pick it up, but otherwise I would veer far away from this mess of a book, and I especially wouldn't let kids under 16 read it.
I'm going to go read The Fault in Our Stars now so I can renew my faith in young love after this wreck. See you at the next review!
2 out of 5 stars
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
Characters:
Cassie- main character, told in first person narrative from her pov
Ben Parish/Zombie- love interest, another main character's pov
Vosch- an Other posing as human military
Cassie's Dad- I don't think his real name is ever mentioned; same for her mom
Sammy/Nugget- Cassie's younger brother
The Others- aliens who have attacked Earth
Evan- the Silencer aka love interest
Ringer- female soldier in Bens squad
Dumbo,Flint,Pound cake, Teacup- Ben's other squad members
The book begins with Cassie trying to survive day to day and hiding from the drones of the Others which patrol the skies looking for humans still alive. She goes one day to search for water at an abandoned gas station and hears someone inside. It's a man who has been shot, but it's 3 weeks into the 4th wave and she knows humans can't be trusted. When she tells him to show his hands he does, and although it's the first person she's had to shoot, she kills the man when she sees a glint of silver in his palm and thinks it's a gun. It turns out to have been a crucifix and Cassie is never the same.
We learn that there were five waves to the attack by the Others:
1. The First Wave: an EMP is released on the Earth which kills all electronic devices; cars, cell phones, tv's, etc.
2. The Second Wave: a huge probe is dropped along the major fault lines in the ocean by the Others, causing tsunamis which obliterate any coastal cities/states/countries
3. The Third Wave: a virus is engineered by the Others to be carried by birds across the world as an airborne virus that causes human's insides to pretty much rot from the inside out and causes blood to pour from every orifice, even eyes.
After these 3 waves are complete, we find out that at this point the human population has dropped from 7 billion to an estimated 200,000
4. The Fourth Wave: the Others come to Earth disguised as humans to rid the world of the rest of the human population. They do this to turn human against human so no one knows who can be trusted, and while they wipe out the humans they find, people turn against each other and try to live solitary lives due to mistrust.
Throughout the book, Cassie flashes back to her previous life before the Others arrived (called the Arrival, go figure) and we learn that she lived a normal life and was in love with a boy who didn't know she existed named Ben Parish. She lived a normal life and had a loving family, but went through the usual teenage angst.
When the others came that all changed. Although her family tried to hide out in their homes while all of their neighbors fled to other places, her mom caught the 3rd wave virus and died. After she dies, her father tells her they have to leave and try to find someplace safer.
They end up in a camp where other survivors are living military style, armed to the teeth, while trying to band together. Their leader is a former military sargeant (?) named Hutchfield.
One day drones start appearing above the camp (this is at the beginning of the 4th wave), and everyone at camp is terrified, not knowing what the drones mean. A helicopter also shows up and the people have hope that the military has finally found them and will come save them, but the helicopter flies away after hovering over the camp a few moments.
That evening, military vehicles and some school buses do show up packed with kids. Corporal Vosch, the leader of this military group, meets with Hutchfield and tells him they will take the kids back to the military base not too far away (Wright-Patterson) and come back for the rest of the people afterwards. Sammy is put on the school bus with the rest of the kids but leaves Cassie his stuffed bear as a reminder of him until she gets to the base.
When Cassie and her father go back to the meeting room with Vosch and Hutchfield with the rest of the camp, her father gives her subtle hints that she should go look for Crisco. Cassie doesn't understand why he's telling her this, but she goes anyways with the accompaniment of a guard from Vosch's army.
They find Crisco in the ash pit (where people who have died of the virus have been burned) looking for jewelry and other valuable items. The guard with Cassie shoots Crisco as soon as they find him, but Cassie is able to kill the guard and hide by burying herself in the ashes of the pit before the other guards come.
When she thinks they are gone, she grabs Sammy's teddy bear and goes to the edge of camp to see if her dad or any others may still be alive. There she sees her dad crawling, having been shot. She starts to go to him but he sees her and motions that she stay hidden, and Cassie sees a pulsing light at the middle of camp, which turns out to be some kind of sonic wave that once it detonates kills everything within a few miles radius of the blast. When Cassie realizes it's a ticking time bomb she runs and jumps down a ravine into a pile of mud that shelters her from the blast.
In between this flashback scene, in present day Cassie is trying to get to the military base where her brother was taken to see if he is still alive. As she heads on her way there, she is shot by a Silencer (this is what Cassie calls the Others of the 4th wave, the human/aliens) and hides under a car while trying to think of a way to escape.
At this time, pov changes to a young soldier named Zombie who is at Wright-Patterson and has been infected with the virus of the 3rd wave and is close to death. While at a point where he is lucid, he sees that the base is being attacked and a soldier comes into his tent and tells him "they're here, they've been here the whole time inside of us", but not seeing what Cassie has already seen he has no idea what that means.
He awakens next in the hospital wing and the doctor explains what the soldier meant by showing him an ultrasound which shows thousands of long tendrils attached to the brain. The Others have apparently planted something in humans that takes over their minds and makes them Other but still look human.
She places an implant in his neck and tells him it's so they can keep track of the Wright-Patterson members who are still alive. She says 1 in 3 humans are now mutated like this and they have a program called Wonderland which they can hook up to his neck to see if he's "infested" and says they found the program on one of the infested's computer.
Wonderland also allows them to see his thoughts and memories as well so they know where best to place him in the ranks of the military (whether he is best as a fighter,medic,etc based on his personality traits).
She assures him that all infested inside the base have been dealt with and he just needs to focus on recovering, since his body is fighting the virus and he's getting better. She tells him she'll show him an infested and it turns out to be his bunkmate Chris. When he tries to defend Chris by saying Chris never tried to hurt him even when he was sick and vulnerable, she tells him all the infested seemed normal until they were activated. She places a button in front of him that says execute and tells him if he's going to be a soldier in this army (who it turns out Vosch is the general of ....hm) that he must be able to kill the enemy who doesn't look like an enemy. He hits the button.
Now we switch pov again to the Silencer (that's what we'll call him at this time since he doesn't have a name yet). He is the one who shot Cassie and he's waiting for her to come out from under the car so he can finish her off. It's revealed that he's been watching her this whole time, and although his task was to kill her he hasn't been able to make himself do it yet, even though he's killed other humans before.
During his chapters, we also learn how it came to be that the Others took human identities. When babies are still in the womb, the Others come to Earth and plant the tendril-thing in the baby. That baby is born with the Other always inside it, but is human until Awakened. Silencer reveals that the Awakening happened 4 years ago and he has been this human ever since, but of course had to still act human in order to wipe out the rest of humanity (the whole purpose of the 4th wave).
Now we're back to Cassie. She awakens in a house with a boy tending to her bullet wound. He introduces himself as Evan Walker. He nurses her back to health and they become close. He leaves at night time to go hunt but hardly ever comes back with anything so Cassie grows suspicious and tries to follow him. She can't keep up and when she turns to go back to the house he's there. He isn't angry, but tells her he goes to hunt just to keep his thoughts in order and to make him feel in control. She believes him and they live together for a while as she's recuperating. He eventually kisses her and tells her he's coming with her to go find her brother, since Sammy is her purpose and she is his.
Sammy's pov is next, and we find out that he has been taken to Wright-Patterson and placed in a military unit with older kids for training. Zombie is there, and it's revealed that Zombie is actually none other than Ben Parish. Zombie is the head of his squad and is assigned to be the one to teach Sammy (who's nickname is now Nugget) how to be a soldier.
On a side note, there is a section here where Vosch talks to Zombie and tells him a story about being given orders to kill everyone over 16 inside a camp right after the 4th wave started ( not sure how long ago the beginning of the 4th wave is supposed to have been at this point) since the military wasn't sure who was and who wasn't an enemy anymore.
So....is Vosch just a human taking orders from a higher up? Or is he an Other? If he's just a human how did he come to have the Eye (the sonic blast thing)? At this point we just don't know about him.
Now that we've established the first pov's of each of the characters, I will summarize the rest rather than going back and forth each time a POV changes.
Zombie and his squad are training to try to become fighters against the Others, and the top 4 squads are promoted at the end of training. His squad comes out on top with the help of the new squad member Ringer, a sharpshooter girl who is brought in after a squad member goes "Dorothy" , meaning he lost his marbles under all the stress and was put in the psych ward.
Zombie is promoted to sargeant and Vosch tells him his squad will be sent into the city to rid it of Others with the assistance of some handy dandy headsets that reveal infested as green and friendlies as just a shadowy color.
When they get to the city they immediately kill 3 Others but there's a 4th sniping them from a roof. Ringer insists they remove their trackers and Zombie thinks she's going Dorothy in the middle of battle but he does it because he knows that if she loses it she could kill them all as skilled as she is with a gun. Looking through the headset she immediately begins glowing green and they realize they haven't been shooting infested, but rather have been brainwashed into thinking their fellow humans were the enemy. Ringer says she has suspected but just now got a chance to prove it.
They go after the sniper and it turns out to be their former instructor. They kill him and Zombie vows to go back to the base to save Nugget. He has Ringer shoot him to buy him some time since he knows they'll put him on meds back at the base and won't be able to hook him up to Wonderland to see his thoughts for a while as he formulates a plan to get Nugget out.
He is picked up by the heli that dropped them off for their mission, and when he's taken back to base he tells Vosch everyone else turned against him when he tried to defend their instructor being there when everyone else said he was an Other. When Vosch asked why he defended him and went against the rest of the squad, Zombie says it's because he figured the instructor was there to take them out should anyone go Dorothy with the blood of first battle.
In the meantime, Cassie and Evan have decided to go after clues as to Sammy's location since they aren't even sure he's actually at the military base. They go to the camp where her dad and the others were killed looking for clues and are attacked. Evan easily dispatches all the kids (soldiers who are just like Zombie aka Ben and think they're Others) and Cassie realizes that although he claims to have been raised on a farm, his ninja skills and headshot sniping means he's something else. He is wounded in the fight and Cassie drags the truth out of him finally; that he is a Silencer who couldn't kill her because he has fallen in love with her. Although she doesn't know what to do about him now, she still proceeds with him to the base and poses as a kid seeking refuge while Evan waits for her outside the base in case anything goes wrong.
She gets inside and manages to find Sammy. When she starts to get away with him Zombie aka Ben shows up at the same time and they almost kill each other thinking they are both enemies but Sammy explains and the try to leave together.
When they are almost out Vosch catches them and takes them to an interrogation room. He is planning to kill Sammy unless Cassie tells him which of his kind betrayed them and told her how to infiltrate the base but she refuses. He pushes the button to kill Sammy but instead of "execute" the command prompt says "oops" and Vosch knows the Other working against them will shut down power to the base next so he tells the Silencer guards to keep them there and he'll be back.
Evan shows up by crawling through the ductwork and takes out the guards and he and Cassie have a joyful reunion. They run but he tells her to leave without him and she realizes he's going to blow up the base with the Eyes. She tries to convince him to come with them but time is short and he tells her he will find her.
Cassie, Ben, and Sammy take off and a get out just as explosions begin and drones begin dropping from the sky. She realizes Evan was able to do what he set out to do and the whole underground base has been blown to smithereens. The ground is giving way beneath them but a Humvee shows up and Ringer, Pound cake, and Dumbo (the other 2 surviving members of Ben's squad) show up and they make it to safety for now.
End of Book 1
Cassie- main character, told in first person narrative from her pov
Ben Parish/Zombie- love interest, another main character's pov
Vosch- an Other posing as human military
Cassie's Dad- I don't think his real name is ever mentioned; same for her mom
Sammy/Nugget- Cassie's younger brother
The Others- aliens who have attacked Earth
Evan- the Silencer aka love interest
Ringer- female soldier in Bens squad
Dumbo,Flint,Pound cake, Teacup- Ben's other squad members
The book begins with Cassie trying to survive day to day and hiding from the drones of the Others which patrol the skies looking for humans still alive. She goes one day to search for water at an abandoned gas station and hears someone inside. It's a man who has been shot, but it's 3 weeks into the 4th wave and she knows humans can't be trusted. When she tells him to show his hands he does, and although it's the first person she's had to shoot, she kills the man when she sees a glint of silver in his palm and thinks it's a gun. It turns out to have been a crucifix and Cassie is never the same.
We learn that there were five waves to the attack by the Others:
1. The First Wave: an EMP is released on the Earth which kills all electronic devices; cars, cell phones, tv's, etc.
2. The Second Wave: a huge probe is dropped along the major fault lines in the ocean by the Others, causing tsunamis which obliterate any coastal cities/states/countries
3. The Third Wave: a virus is engineered by the Others to be carried by birds across the world as an airborne virus that causes human's insides to pretty much rot from the inside out and causes blood to pour from every orifice, even eyes.
After these 3 waves are complete, we find out that at this point the human population has dropped from 7 billion to an estimated 200,000
4. The Fourth Wave: the Others come to Earth disguised as humans to rid the world of the rest of the human population. They do this to turn human against human so no one knows who can be trusted, and while they wipe out the humans they find, people turn against each other and try to live solitary lives due to mistrust.
Throughout the book, Cassie flashes back to her previous life before the Others arrived (called the Arrival, go figure) and we learn that she lived a normal life and was in love with a boy who didn't know she existed named Ben Parish. She lived a normal life and had a loving family, but went through the usual teenage angst.
When the others came that all changed. Although her family tried to hide out in their homes while all of their neighbors fled to other places, her mom caught the 3rd wave virus and died. After she dies, her father tells her they have to leave and try to find someplace safer.
They end up in a camp where other survivors are living military style, armed to the teeth, while trying to band together. Their leader is a former military sargeant (?) named Hutchfield.
One day drones start appearing above the camp (this is at the beginning of the 4th wave), and everyone at camp is terrified, not knowing what the drones mean. A helicopter also shows up and the people have hope that the military has finally found them and will come save them, but the helicopter flies away after hovering over the camp a few moments.
That evening, military vehicles and some school buses do show up packed with kids. Corporal Vosch, the leader of this military group, meets with Hutchfield and tells him they will take the kids back to the military base not too far away (Wright-Patterson) and come back for the rest of the people afterwards. Sammy is put on the school bus with the rest of the kids but leaves Cassie his stuffed bear as a reminder of him until she gets to the base.
When Cassie and her father go back to the meeting room with Vosch and Hutchfield with the rest of the camp, her father gives her subtle hints that she should go look for Crisco. Cassie doesn't understand why he's telling her this, but she goes anyways with the accompaniment of a guard from Vosch's army.
They find Crisco in the ash pit (where people who have died of the virus have been burned) looking for jewelry and other valuable items. The guard with Cassie shoots Crisco as soon as they find him, but Cassie is able to kill the guard and hide by burying herself in the ashes of the pit before the other guards come.
When she thinks they are gone, she grabs Sammy's teddy bear and goes to the edge of camp to see if her dad or any others may still be alive. There she sees her dad crawling, having been shot. She starts to go to him but he sees her and motions that she stay hidden, and Cassie sees a pulsing light at the middle of camp, which turns out to be some kind of sonic wave that once it detonates kills everything within a few miles radius of the blast. When Cassie realizes it's a ticking time bomb she runs and jumps down a ravine into a pile of mud that shelters her from the blast.
In between this flashback scene, in present day Cassie is trying to get to the military base where her brother was taken to see if he is still alive. As she heads on her way there, she is shot by a Silencer (this is what Cassie calls the Others of the 4th wave, the human/aliens) and hides under a car while trying to think of a way to escape.
At this time, pov changes to a young soldier named Zombie who is at Wright-Patterson and has been infected with the virus of the 3rd wave and is close to death. While at a point where he is lucid, he sees that the base is being attacked and a soldier comes into his tent and tells him "they're here, they've been here the whole time inside of us", but not seeing what Cassie has already seen he has no idea what that means.
He awakens next in the hospital wing and the doctor explains what the soldier meant by showing him an ultrasound which shows thousands of long tendrils attached to the brain. The Others have apparently planted something in humans that takes over their minds and makes them Other but still look human.
She places an implant in his neck and tells him it's so they can keep track of the Wright-Patterson members who are still alive. She says 1 in 3 humans are now mutated like this and they have a program called Wonderland which they can hook up to his neck to see if he's "infested" and says they found the program on one of the infested's computer.
Wonderland also allows them to see his thoughts and memories as well so they know where best to place him in the ranks of the military (whether he is best as a fighter,medic,etc based on his personality traits).
She assures him that all infested inside the base have been dealt with and he just needs to focus on recovering, since his body is fighting the virus and he's getting better. She tells him she'll show him an infested and it turns out to be his bunkmate Chris. When he tries to defend Chris by saying Chris never tried to hurt him even when he was sick and vulnerable, she tells him all the infested seemed normal until they were activated. She places a button in front of him that says execute and tells him if he's going to be a soldier in this army (who it turns out Vosch is the general of ....hm) that he must be able to kill the enemy who doesn't look like an enemy. He hits the button.
Now we switch pov again to the Silencer (that's what we'll call him at this time since he doesn't have a name yet). He is the one who shot Cassie and he's waiting for her to come out from under the car so he can finish her off. It's revealed that he's been watching her this whole time, and although his task was to kill her he hasn't been able to make himself do it yet, even though he's killed other humans before.
During his chapters, we also learn how it came to be that the Others took human identities. When babies are still in the womb, the Others come to Earth and plant the tendril-thing in the baby. That baby is born with the Other always inside it, but is human until Awakened. Silencer reveals that the Awakening happened 4 years ago and he has been this human ever since, but of course had to still act human in order to wipe out the rest of humanity (the whole purpose of the 4th wave).
Now we're back to Cassie. She awakens in a house with a boy tending to her bullet wound. He introduces himself as Evan Walker. He nurses her back to health and they become close. He leaves at night time to go hunt but hardly ever comes back with anything so Cassie grows suspicious and tries to follow him. She can't keep up and when she turns to go back to the house he's there. He isn't angry, but tells her he goes to hunt just to keep his thoughts in order and to make him feel in control. She believes him and they live together for a while as she's recuperating. He eventually kisses her and tells her he's coming with her to go find her brother, since Sammy is her purpose and she is his.
Sammy's pov is next, and we find out that he has been taken to Wright-Patterson and placed in a military unit with older kids for training. Zombie is there, and it's revealed that Zombie is actually none other than Ben Parish. Zombie is the head of his squad and is assigned to be the one to teach Sammy (who's nickname is now Nugget) how to be a soldier.
On a side note, there is a section here where Vosch talks to Zombie and tells him a story about being given orders to kill everyone over 16 inside a camp right after the 4th wave started ( not sure how long ago the beginning of the 4th wave is supposed to have been at this point) since the military wasn't sure who was and who wasn't an enemy anymore.
So....is Vosch just a human taking orders from a higher up? Or is he an Other? If he's just a human how did he come to have the Eye (the sonic blast thing)? At this point we just don't know about him.
Now that we've established the first pov's of each of the characters, I will summarize the rest rather than going back and forth each time a POV changes.
Zombie and his squad are training to try to become fighters against the Others, and the top 4 squads are promoted at the end of training. His squad comes out on top with the help of the new squad member Ringer, a sharpshooter girl who is brought in after a squad member goes "Dorothy" , meaning he lost his marbles under all the stress and was put in the psych ward.
Zombie is promoted to sargeant and Vosch tells him his squad will be sent into the city to rid it of Others with the assistance of some handy dandy headsets that reveal infested as green and friendlies as just a shadowy color.
When they get to the city they immediately kill 3 Others but there's a 4th sniping them from a roof. Ringer insists they remove their trackers and Zombie thinks she's going Dorothy in the middle of battle but he does it because he knows that if she loses it she could kill them all as skilled as she is with a gun. Looking through the headset she immediately begins glowing green and they realize they haven't been shooting infested, but rather have been brainwashed into thinking their fellow humans were the enemy. Ringer says she has suspected but just now got a chance to prove it.
They go after the sniper and it turns out to be their former instructor. They kill him and Zombie vows to go back to the base to save Nugget. He has Ringer shoot him to buy him some time since he knows they'll put him on meds back at the base and won't be able to hook him up to Wonderland to see his thoughts for a while as he formulates a plan to get Nugget out.
He is picked up by the heli that dropped them off for their mission, and when he's taken back to base he tells Vosch everyone else turned against him when he tried to defend their instructor being there when everyone else said he was an Other. When Vosch asked why he defended him and went against the rest of the squad, Zombie says it's because he figured the instructor was there to take them out should anyone go Dorothy with the blood of first battle.
In the meantime, Cassie and Evan have decided to go after clues as to Sammy's location since they aren't even sure he's actually at the military base. They go to the camp where her dad and the others were killed looking for clues and are attacked. Evan easily dispatches all the kids (soldiers who are just like Zombie aka Ben and think they're Others) and Cassie realizes that although he claims to have been raised on a farm, his ninja skills and headshot sniping means he's something else. He is wounded in the fight and Cassie drags the truth out of him finally; that he is a Silencer who couldn't kill her because he has fallen in love with her. Although she doesn't know what to do about him now, she still proceeds with him to the base and poses as a kid seeking refuge while Evan waits for her outside the base in case anything goes wrong.
She gets inside and manages to find Sammy. When she starts to get away with him Zombie aka Ben shows up at the same time and they almost kill each other thinking they are both enemies but Sammy explains and the try to leave together.
When they are almost out Vosch catches them and takes them to an interrogation room. He is planning to kill Sammy unless Cassie tells him which of his kind betrayed them and told her how to infiltrate the base but she refuses. He pushes the button to kill Sammy but instead of "execute" the command prompt says "oops" and Vosch knows the Other working against them will shut down power to the base next so he tells the Silencer guards to keep them there and he'll be back.
Evan shows up by crawling through the ductwork and takes out the guards and he and Cassie have a joyful reunion. They run but he tells her to leave without him and she realizes he's going to blow up the base with the Eyes. She tries to convince him to come with them but time is short and he tells her he will find her.
Cassie, Ben, and Sammy take off and a get out just as explosions begin and drones begin dropping from the sky. She realizes Evan was able to do what he set out to do and the whole underground base has been blown to smithereens. The ground is giving way beneath them but a Humvee shows up and Ringer, Pound cake, and Dumbo (the other 2 surviving members of Ben's squad) show up and they make it to safety for now.
End of Book 1
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Origin (Lux #4) by Jennifer Armentrout
Characters newly introduced to series:
Sargeant Jason Dasher - an employee of Daedalus
Dr. Roth- doctor employed by Daedalus
Archer- guard at Daedalus/an Origin
This novel is told from both Katy and Daemon's perspective. Katy awakens in the Daedalus facility in Arizona (Area 51) and is told that she needs to cooperate and that once they show her what they are really about that she will WANT to cooperate. She doesn't at first and they blast her with onyx until she does.
Daemon is being held in the Luxen village near their hometown in West Virginia, but escapes to go after Katy. He drives straight to the Daedalus facility in Mount Weather, knowing he will be captured but hoping they will take him to Katy if he agrees to cooperate. Luc has told him that if Daemon will get him a sample of the LH-11 vaccine Daedalus has that he will make sure Daemon and Katy are able to escape Area 51 since he has contacts there.
Katy is taken by Dr. Roth to an exam room, and proceeds to explain that Daedalus is doing great things in medical research with the assistance of hybrids and Luxen, and they have managed to create a compound which is helping to cure cancer and other diseases. He informs her there are Luxen who want to see humanity fall, and that although some Luxens have been assimilated into society (such as the Blacks), he then tells her the Luxen are the cause of the war that destroyed their planet and will do the same to Earth, and Daemon and Dee are actually part of this latter category. Below is a direct quote from the book where Dr. Roth explains this:
His eyes met mine. “How many Luxen do you think there are, Miss Swartz?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Daemon had once mentioned how many he thought
were here, but I couldn’t recall the amount. “Thousands?”
Dasher spoke with authority. “There are roughly forty-five thousand inhabiting Earth.”
Whoa, that was a lot.
“About seventy percent of that forty-five thousand have been assimilated. Another ten
percent can be trusted completely, like those in the other room. And the last twenty
percent? There are nine thousand Luxen who want to see mankind under their thumbs—
nine thousand beings who can wield as much destruction as a small warhead. We barely
keep them under control as it is, and all it would take for a complete upheaval of our
society is for them to sway more Luxen to their side. But want to know another startling
number?”
Staring at him, I had no idea what to say.
“Let me ask you a question, Ms. Swartz. Where exactly do you think Daemon Black,
his family, and his friends fall?”
“They aren’t interested in subjugating a house fly!” I barked out a harsh laugh.
“Insinuating that is just ridiculous.”
“Is it?” He paused. “You can never really, truly know someone. And I am sure when
you first met Daemon and his family, you never would’ve assumed what they are,
correct?”
He had me there.
“You have to admit that if they were so good at hiding the fact they weren’t even
human, how good they must be at hiding something as invisible as their allegiance,” he
said. “You forget that they are not human, and they are not, I can assure you, a part of
the ten percent that we trust.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t—couldn’t—believe what he said,
but he had said all of this without an ounce of scorn. As if he were just stating facts, like
a doctor would when telling a patient he had terminal cancer.
He turned back to the window, lifting his chin. “It is speculated that there are hundreds
of thousands of Luxen out there, in space, who traveled to other points in the universe.
What do you think would happen if they came here? Remember, these are Luxen who
have had little to no contact with mankind.”
“I...” A shiver of unease traveled up my spine and across my shoulders. Turning my
attention to the window, I watched a Luxen flicker into his true form. When I spoke, I
didn’t recognize my own voice. “I don’t know.”
“They would obliterate us.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, still not wanting to believe what he was saying. “That
sounds a little extreme.”
“Does it?” He paused, sounding curious. “Look at our own history. One stronger
nation takes over another. The Luxen’s and even the Arum’s mentalities are no different
from ours. Basic Darwinism.”
“Survival of the fittest,” I murmured, and for a moment I could almost see it. An
invasion of Hollywood proportions, and I knew enough about the Luxen to know that if
that many came here, and they wanted to take over, they would.
They begin testing Katy by trying to make her fight other hybrids who haven't developed correctly and are a bit cuckoo like Carissa was in the last book. When Katy won't fight them, they bring in Blake and he ticks her off so much that she does fight him and ends up accidentally killing him when she blasts him backwards into a wall. The doctors of course, are pleased.
Nancy has made a deal with Daemon and agrees to let him see Katy in exchange for his cooperation. They fly to Area 51 and Daemon and Katy reunite.
They make Katy cut her hand to show that Daemon can heal it and he does, but later on they come and get Katy without Daemon knowing and a gruesome scene takes place where they strap her down to a table and cut her back to pieces, down to the bone, and then bring Daemon in to heal her again. He does and he and Katy vow to get out as soon as possible.
One day while they are being held captive everyone starts freaking out talking about a threat in building B, and a little boy appears. He goes all Carrie on everyone and is able to kill a few of the soldiers and turn their weapons to ashes before they capture him again. We find out kids like this are called Origins, and they are the result of a Luxen and Hybrid who was a successful mutation breeding, and then the kids are raised by Daedalus. Daedalus is pretty much growing their own army.
Katy manages to steal a vial of the LH-11 one day when Dasher, Roth, and Nancy are trying to get Daemon to heal a mortally wounded Daedalus soldier (who VOLUNTEERED to mortally stab himself in the name of the research wtf?).
Katy and Daemon are planning to release all the Origins to wreak havoc in the compound while they escape. When they get in the elevator after stealing the LH-11, Asher, who is always present and has become a friend to Katy and Daemon even though he's a guard, tells them that their plan is doomed to fail but he can help them, as he's an Origin too and wants to get out just as badly as they do. Turns out Asher is Luc's contact in the facility.
After they release the Origins and epic battle ensues and they escape. Luc and Paris show up at the crappy motel Asher told them to go to and Daemon and Katy go with them to a large house where Luc has been staying.
Matthew, Dee, Dawson and Beth, Ash and Andrew are there and it's a happy reunion. Matthew tells them that they have been staying at this house because he's been friends with the owner for years and Dee and Dawson were determined to come up with an escape plan to get Daemon/Katy out but they escaped before they even got the chance.
After a few happy days (in which Daemon and Katy go get married in Vegas with their new identities Luc made them), all hell breaks loose when Matthew calls Nancy(why?!) and turns Daemon and Katy back in. When Luc realizes this he attacks Matthew and Matthew says he did it to "protect the family", and that Nancy said the rest of the family could live free and happy if he did it, so he thought sacrificing a few for the greater good was the best route to take.
Dawson freaks out and kills Matthew and they all make an escape. They head out of Vegas but Daedalus is already there and is stopping vehicles and checking each one at a checkpoint. Not seeing a way out, the Luxen decide to cause a scene by revealing themselves and in the commotion they will escape. On a side note, I at first didn't realize why Daemon didn't just do his "stop time" thing so they could run away, but the cars were stuck in traffic and all that's around them is desert so it wouldn't have done any good, as they would have died of dehydration probably before they made it out of the desert.
It doesn't work out as planned though and Ash, Andrew and Paris are killed when the military and a bunch of Arum attack them at once. The rest of the group manages to escape and they go to Luc's cabin in the woods of Idaho to hide out. It's revealed at this time that the reason Beth has been not feeling well is because she's pregnant.
One night when Katy and Daemon are asleep, Katy wakes up to see Daemon in his true form glowing beside her. Dawson and Dee come into the room and say the same thing just happened to them. They all go to the window and see glowing in the woods.
When they go outside, they see that it's hundreds of Luxen coming towards the cabin. Daemon, Dawson, and Dee begin to flicker into their true form and move toward the other Luxen. Katy, Luc, and Beth try to call out to them but it's like they don't even hear them. The book ends with this passage:
Suddenly Archer was beside me and Luc was near Beth. We were backing up, but I
didn’t feel my feet moving or my muscles working. My eyes were trained on Daemon
until the others of his kind swallowed his light.
Fear coated the inside of my mouth and turned the blood into slush in my veins. In that
instant I couldn’t help but think of what Dasher had said about what would happen when
the Luxen came—and whether Daemon would stand with his own kind or with mine.
I wasn’t sure Daemon even had a choice.
I wasn’t sure I did, either.
End of book 4
Sargeant Jason Dasher - an employee of Daedalus
Dr. Roth- doctor employed by Daedalus
Archer- guard at Daedalus/an Origin
This novel is told from both Katy and Daemon's perspective. Katy awakens in the Daedalus facility in Arizona (Area 51) and is told that she needs to cooperate and that once they show her what they are really about that she will WANT to cooperate. She doesn't at first and they blast her with onyx until she does.
Daemon is being held in the Luxen village near their hometown in West Virginia, but escapes to go after Katy. He drives straight to the Daedalus facility in Mount Weather, knowing he will be captured but hoping they will take him to Katy if he agrees to cooperate. Luc has told him that if Daemon will get him a sample of the LH-11 vaccine Daedalus has that he will make sure Daemon and Katy are able to escape Area 51 since he has contacts there.
Katy is taken by Dr. Roth to an exam room, and proceeds to explain that Daedalus is doing great things in medical research with the assistance of hybrids and Luxen, and they have managed to create a compound which is helping to cure cancer and other diseases. He informs her there are Luxen who want to see humanity fall, and that although some Luxens have been assimilated into society (such as the Blacks), he then tells her the Luxen are the cause of the war that destroyed their planet and will do the same to Earth, and Daemon and Dee are actually part of this latter category. Below is a direct quote from the book where Dr. Roth explains this:
His eyes met mine. “How many Luxen do you think there are, Miss Swartz?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Daemon had once mentioned how many he thought
were here, but I couldn’t recall the amount. “Thousands?”
Dasher spoke with authority. “There are roughly forty-five thousand inhabiting Earth.”
Whoa, that was a lot.
“About seventy percent of that forty-five thousand have been assimilated. Another ten
percent can be trusted completely, like those in the other room. And the last twenty
percent? There are nine thousand Luxen who want to see mankind under their thumbs—
nine thousand beings who can wield as much destruction as a small warhead. We barely
keep them under control as it is, and all it would take for a complete upheaval of our
society is for them to sway more Luxen to their side. But want to know another startling
number?”
Staring at him, I had no idea what to say.
“Let me ask you a question, Ms. Swartz. Where exactly do you think Daemon Black,
his family, and his friends fall?”
“They aren’t interested in subjugating a house fly!” I barked out a harsh laugh.
“Insinuating that is just ridiculous.”
“Is it?” He paused. “You can never really, truly know someone. And I am sure when
you first met Daemon and his family, you never would’ve assumed what they are,
correct?”
He had me there.
“You have to admit that if they were so good at hiding the fact they weren’t even
human, how good they must be at hiding something as invisible as their allegiance,” he
said. “You forget that they are not human, and they are not, I can assure you, a part of
the ten percent that we trust.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t—couldn’t—believe what he said,
but he had said all of this without an ounce of scorn. As if he were just stating facts, like
a doctor would when telling a patient he had terminal cancer.
He turned back to the window, lifting his chin. “It is speculated that there are hundreds
of thousands of Luxen out there, in space, who traveled to other points in the universe.
What do you think would happen if they came here? Remember, these are Luxen who
have had little to no contact with mankind.”
“I...” A shiver of unease traveled up my spine and across my shoulders. Turning my
attention to the window, I watched a Luxen flicker into his true form. When I spoke, I
didn’t recognize my own voice. “I don’t know.”
“They would obliterate us.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, still not wanting to believe what he was saying. “That
sounds a little extreme.”
“Does it?” He paused, sounding curious. “Look at our own history. One stronger
nation takes over another. The Luxen’s and even the Arum’s mentalities are no different
from ours. Basic Darwinism.”
“Survival of the fittest,” I murmured, and for a moment I could almost see it. An
invasion of Hollywood proportions, and I knew enough about the Luxen to know that if
that many came here, and they wanted to take over, they would.
They begin testing Katy by trying to make her fight other hybrids who haven't developed correctly and are a bit cuckoo like Carissa was in the last book. When Katy won't fight them, they bring in Blake and he ticks her off so much that she does fight him and ends up accidentally killing him when she blasts him backwards into a wall. The doctors of course, are pleased.
Nancy has made a deal with Daemon and agrees to let him see Katy in exchange for his cooperation. They fly to Area 51 and Daemon and Katy reunite.
They make Katy cut her hand to show that Daemon can heal it and he does, but later on they come and get Katy without Daemon knowing and a gruesome scene takes place where they strap her down to a table and cut her back to pieces, down to the bone, and then bring Daemon in to heal her again. He does and he and Katy vow to get out as soon as possible.
One day while they are being held captive everyone starts freaking out talking about a threat in building B, and a little boy appears. He goes all Carrie on everyone and is able to kill a few of the soldiers and turn their weapons to ashes before they capture him again. We find out kids like this are called Origins, and they are the result of a Luxen and Hybrid who was a successful mutation breeding, and then the kids are raised by Daedalus. Daedalus is pretty much growing their own army.
Katy manages to steal a vial of the LH-11 one day when Dasher, Roth, and Nancy are trying to get Daemon to heal a mortally wounded Daedalus soldier (who VOLUNTEERED to mortally stab himself in the name of the research wtf?).
Katy and Daemon are planning to release all the Origins to wreak havoc in the compound while they escape. When they get in the elevator after stealing the LH-11, Asher, who is always present and has become a friend to Katy and Daemon even though he's a guard, tells them that their plan is doomed to fail but he can help them, as he's an Origin too and wants to get out just as badly as they do. Turns out Asher is Luc's contact in the facility.
After they release the Origins and epic battle ensues and they escape. Luc and Paris show up at the crappy motel Asher told them to go to and Daemon and Katy go with them to a large house where Luc has been staying.
Matthew, Dee, Dawson and Beth, Ash and Andrew are there and it's a happy reunion. Matthew tells them that they have been staying at this house because he's been friends with the owner for years and Dee and Dawson were determined to come up with an escape plan to get Daemon/Katy out but they escaped before they even got the chance.
After a few happy days (in which Daemon and Katy go get married in Vegas with their new identities Luc made them), all hell breaks loose when Matthew calls Nancy(why?!) and turns Daemon and Katy back in. When Luc realizes this he attacks Matthew and Matthew says he did it to "protect the family", and that Nancy said the rest of the family could live free and happy if he did it, so he thought sacrificing a few for the greater good was the best route to take.
Dawson freaks out and kills Matthew and they all make an escape. They head out of Vegas but Daedalus is already there and is stopping vehicles and checking each one at a checkpoint. Not seeing a way out, the Luxen decide to cause a scene by revealing themselves and in the commotion they will escape. On a side note, I at first didn't realize why Daemon didn't just do his "stop time" thing so they could run away, but the cars were stuck in traffic and all that's around them is desert so it wouldn't have done any good, as they would have died of dehydration probably before they made it out of the desert.
It doesn't work out as planned though and Ash, Andrew and Paris are killed when the military and a bunch of Arum attack them at once. The rest of the group manages to escape and they go to Luc's cabin in the woods of Idaho to hide out. It's revealed at this time that the reason Beth has been not feeling well is because she's pregnant.
One night when Katy and Daemon are asleep, Katy wakes up to see Daemon in his true form glowing beside her. Dawson and Dee come into the room and say the same thing just happened to them. They all go to the window and see glowing in the woods.
When they go outside, they see that it's hundreds of Luxen coming towards the cabin. Daemon, Dawson, and Dee begin to flicker into their true form and move toward the other Luxen. Katy, Luc, and Beth try to call out to them but it's like they don't even hear them. The book ends with this passage:
Suddenly Archer was beside me and Luc was near Beth. We were backing up, but I
didn’t feel my feet moving or my muscles working. My eyes were trained on Daemon
until the others of his kind swallowed his light.
Fear coated the inside of my mouth and turned the blood into slush in my veins. In that
instant I couldn’t help but think of what Dasher had said about what would happen when
the Luxen came—and whether Daemon would stand with his own kind or with mine.
I wasn’t sure Daemon even had a choice.
I wasn’t sure I did, either.
End of book 4
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Opal (Lux #3) by Jennifer Armentrout
Characters: see previous summaries in series
This book picks up right where Onyx left off, with Dawson back home living with Daemon and Dee.
Katy and the gang go back to school after a large snowstorm, giving them time to recoup from everything that's happened recently, and Katy sees someone she thinks is Blake. It does turn out to be him and he confronts her telling her he needs the Luxen's help and hers to try to get his friend Chris from Mount Weather because he's afraid they will kill Chris since Blake's mission to bring Katy back failed. Katy goes cuckoo for a minute and attacks Blake saying she will never help him since he killed Adam and almost killed Dee, but he tells her he can help get Beth back because she's being held captive there too.
After discussing with the rest of the Luxen, they all decide they have to at least try for Dawson's sake, because if they don't he's going to go back for her anyways.
Blake takes them to a club that his friend Luc owns, who is a hybrid also. Luc is very familiar with Mount Weather's security system, so he makes a deal with Daemon and Katy that as long as they promise to provide him with a favor of his choosing the next time he needs it he will shut down the security systems for a 15 minute window and get them all the passwords to the doors.
The Luxen and Blake run the attack on Mount Weather like freakin ninjas and everything is going awesome, but when they get to one of the doors they are sprayed with airborne onyx and Katy and Andrew both collapse.
The plan has failed, but Blake tells them a story of when he was at Mount Weather training with Daedalus about how everything the trainees touched seemed to be coated in onyx, and he thinks it's so a resistance can be built up. He says if they train with the onyx every day they may be able to defeat the airborne system. They all agree to do so.
In the meantime, although Katy still feels hatred for Blake for what he did, she does also feel sympathy in knowing that he did what he did to try to protect his friend, the same as she would if it were Daemon or Dee.
Although she and Dee aren't best buds anymore, the do try to mend their friendship by going prom dress shopping together and trying to have a few heart to heart's.
On a side note too, Katy keeps having dreams that Daemon comes into her room and sleeps with her (just sleeping, not the other thing you pervs), but it turns out it was Blake who actually WAS lying down with her. She realizes this when he leans in to tell her something in the classroom one day and she smells his cologne....the same scent she smells when she had been "dreaming".
Not too long after, Katy comes home and Carissa is in her room, but she's gone totally loony and been turned into a hybrid and tries to kill Katy. After expending her Source, Carissa spontaneously combusts (the result of an unstable hybrid) and a few days later while searching for her shoes under her bed Katy pulls out a rock that turns out to be opal (ta-da! hence the title) and is an extra bit of protection against the onyx.
Will shows up back at Katy's house, but his cancer has come back with a vengeance and Katy easily kills him when he shoots her.
They try another attack on Mount Weather and everything seems to be going great. Beth and Chris are there, both seemingly mistreated but sane, but when they begin to head back out, laser grids start shooting across the room and Arum are chasing them. Katy sees Blake and sees him holding the opal. Realizing he stole it from her, she knows he has sounded an alarm and that's why everyting is going nuts. He gets away from Katy and the other Luxen, but Katy gets stuck between a laser wall and the rest of the group. They have to leave without her, although Daemon swears he will be back soon to get her, then the Arum come up and knock Katy out.
End of book 3.
This book picks up right where Onyx left off, with Dawson back home living with Daemon and Dee.
Katy and the gang go back to school after a large snowstorm, giving them time to recoup from everything that's happened recently, and Katy sees someone she thinks is Blake. It does turn out to be him and he confronts her telling her he needs the Luxen's help and hers to try to get his friend Chris from Mount Weather because he's afraid they will kill Chris since Blake's mission to bring Katy back failed. Katy goes cuckoo for a minute and attacks Blake saying she will never help him since he killed Adam and almost killed Dee, but he tells her he can help get Beth back because she's being held captive there too.
After discussing with the rest of the Luxen, they all decide they have to at least try for Dawson's sake, because if they don't he's going to go back for her anyways.
Blake takes them to a club that his friend Luc owns, who is a hybrid also. Luc is very familiar with Mount Weather's security system, so he makes a deal with Daemon and Katy that as long as they promise to provide him with a favor of his choosing the next time he needs it he will shut down the security systems for a 15 minute window and get them all the passwords to the doors.
The Luxen and Blake run the attack on Mount Weather like freakin ninjas and everything is going awesome, but when they get to one of the doors they are sprayed with airborne onyx and Katy and Andrew both collapse.
The plan has failed, but Blake tells them a story of when he was at Mount Weather training with Daedalus about how everything the trainees touched seemed to be coated in onyx, and he thinks it's so a resistance can be built up. He says if they train with the onyx every day they may be able to defeat the airborne system. They all agree to do so.
In the meantime, although Katy still feels hatred for Blake for what he did, she does also feel sympathy in knowing that he did what he did to try to protect his friend, the same as she would if it were Daemon or Dee.
Although she and Dee aren't best buds anymore, the do try to mend their friendship by going prom dress shopping together and trying to have a few heart to heart's.
On a side note too, Katy keeps having dreams that Daemon comes into her room and sleeps with her (just sleeping, not the other thing you pervs), but it turns out it was Blake who actually WAS lying down with her. She realizes this when he leans in to tell her something in the classroom one day and she smells his cologne....the same scent she smells when she had been "dreaming".
Not too long after, Katy comes home and Carissa is in her room, but she's gone totally loony and been turned into a hybrid and tries to kill Katy. After expending her Source, Carissa spontaneously combusts (the result of an unstable hybrid) and a few days later while searching for her shoes under her bed Katy pulls out a rock that turns out to be opal (ta-da! hence the title) and is an extra bit of protection against the onyx.
Will shows up back at Katy's house, but his cancer has come back with a vengeance and Katy easily kills him when he shoots her.
They try another attack on Mount Weather and everything seems to be going great. Beth and Chris are there, both seemingly mistreated but sane, but when they begin to head back out, laser grids start shooting across the room and Arum are chasing them. Katy sees Blake and sees him holding the opal. Realizing he stole it from her, she knows he has sounded an alarm and that's why everyting is going nuts. He gets away from Katy and the other Luxen, but Katy gets stuck between a laser wall and the rest of the group. They have to leave without her, although Daemon swears he will be back soon to get her, then the Arum come up and knock Katy out.
End of book 3.
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