Book Review(s): Last Survivors Trilogy, Susan Beth Pfeffer
Title: Life As We Knew It (hard copy)/The Dead and the Gone (hard copy)/ This World We Live In (Nook)
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Genre: Post-Apocalypse, SciFi
Release Date: 2008, 2010
So, I just found out there actually is a fourth book to this coming out - goes to show how much I pay attention. So really, that subject line up there should read 'soon-to-be quartet' or something where it says trilogy. But since I've only read the first three books, I think we're good. First, I should say the first two of these were largely an impulse buy because my Borders was going out of business and because one of them had a John Green quote on the cover, and I adore everything that man's written, that I've read, so clearly he must have good taste in things to read, right? And he really may, but . . .
The science in this is just solid enough to make it a little better than that movie where the earth's core stops spinning or The Day After Yesterday. Which . . . is probably fine to the intended young adult audience, but when it's presented in a very nearly hard sci-fi format, it seems it should be a little better researched. I'm not spoiling anything when I say that the moon is knocked closer to the earth by an asteroid/meteor and this causes all sorts of havoc - that's all spelled out in the cover copy. Even the one liner on the front says 'The weather's finally broken . . . for good' or similar. Anyway, I could probably get past this if the story itself were good (it's rather repetitive in the first two, and quite horrifying on a human scale) or if there was some redeeming quality in the main characters . . . but there really isn't much. And given the decline in writing quality between the first and third books, I really only stuck through it for completeness' sake, which is the same reason I'll probably grab the fourth for my Nook when it comes out.
Life As We Knew It is written from the point of view of its teenaged 'protagonist', in journal format, and is a bit more interesting than the others simply for that, I should probably say. This World We Live In follows that, but it doesn't save it.
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Genre: Post-Apocalypse, SciFi
Release Date: 2008, 2010
So, I just found out there actually is a fourth book to this coming out - goes to show how much I pay attention. So really, that subject line up there should read 'soon-to-be quartet' or something where it says trilogy. But since I've only read the first three books, I think we're good. First, I should say the first two of these were largely an impulse buy because my Borders was going out of business and because one of them had a John Green quote on the cover, and I adore everything that man's written, that I've read, so clearly he must have good taste in things to read, right? And he really may, but . . .
The science in this is just solid enough to make it a little better than that movie where the earth's core stops spinning or The Day After Yesterday. Which . . . is probably fine to the intended young adult audience, but when it's presented in a very nearly hard sci-fi format, it seems it should be a little better researched. I'm not spoiling anything when I say that the moon is knocked closer to the earth by an asteroid/meteor and this causes all sorts of havoc - that's all spelled out in the cover copy. Even the one liner on the front says 'The weather's finally broken . . . for good' or similar. Anyway, I could probably get past this if the story itself were good (it's rather repetitive in the first two, and quite horrifying on a human scale) or if there was some redeeming quality in the main characters . . . but there really isn't much. And given the decline in writing quality between the first and third books, I really only stuck through it for completeness' sake, which is the same reason I'll probably grab the fourth for my Nook when it comes out.
Life As We Knew It is written from the point of view of its teenaged 'protagonist', in journal format, and is a bit more interesting than the others simply for that, I should probably say. This World We Live In follows that, but it doesn't save it.