The Last Star

"Penderitaan itu perlu. Penderitaan adalah kehidupan. Tanpa penderitaan, takkan ada kegembiraan."

A while back, I ordered book two of this three book series by Rick Yancey, but, not surprisingly, it never arrived. So I kind of brushed up on the plot through an internet review and forged on to book three, The Last Star.

I found it, like book one, tightly plotted and consistently entertaining and inventive. The development of the central characters was carried nicely through to the end.

When an advanced alien race invades the earth and carries out, through a 5-wave plan, the erasure of millions and the collapse of civilized structure, the final results are not bound to be pretty--and Yancey cuts no corners in this regard. What he shows the reader, ultimately, and what the aliens also discover, is that love itself cannot be defeated. It continually rises from the ruins, gaining strength through every defeat--a strength that cannot be matched or overcome by technology or scheming. Thus the quote above: Suffering is necessary. Suffering is life. Without suffering, gladness has no meaning.

Many are sacrificed, many are martyred, and yet their deaths continually give birth to new life, ever fortifying the relentless will to survive and prevail. This is what the aliens did not know, could not comprehend, and could not have foreseen. It was, ironically, their own doom from the beginning.