[LISTENED TO: September 30, 2017] The Resisters
I saw this audio book at the library and thought it might be a fun book for a long car trip. It turned out the family wasn’t going on one for a while, but Clark and I were heading to Hartford for the Pokémon Regional Championship, and this was just about the right length for the trip.
I was turned off by the cover–that very computerized version of the kids. Although I see that Nylund writes books in the Halo series, (and has an interesting history writing for Microsoft, go figure). So I guess it makes sense that there’s a computer edge to it.
The story wastes no time opening and doesn’t wait for you to catch up.
Ethan Blackwood is twelve and, as the book opens, he is in the last few seconds of a very important soccer match. But, with no explanation given , we learn that this soccer match is not what we are used to. All of the competitors are wearing large armored suits and the ball can hit speeds of 300 MPH. Ethan is a year younger than his teammates, but he has proven himself on many occasions and they all look to him for a great play.
While their coach is giving them a pep talk, Ethan is distracted–looking at his parents, looking at the crowd. He notices that there are two kids who don’t seem to fit in at all. They are not in school colors and they seem really intense. Ethan misses the coach’s instructions, but he doesn’t care, he goes with his guts and scores the winning goal. The crowd goes nuts.
As Ethan walks home, the two strange kids talk catch up with him and ask questions. Their names are Felix and Madison (this of course made met think of The Odd Couple). Then they test his reflexes (with a punch to the head that he evades).
They think he’ll “do.” And they take him off to see something crazy. A six-foot mechanical wasp, an equally large beetle and a huge dragonfly. After the initial shock of all of this wears off, Felix gets in the beetle, Madison gets in the dragonfly and they tell him to try to get into the wasp. He figures it out and instantly feels really comfortable within the mechanical beast. And they begin flying around.
Soon, some enormous insects start attacking them. And the three of them work well together. Until Ethan comes to his senses, realizes that not only is he missing his post-game party, but that he has a quiz in the morning. So he takes off for home.
When he wakes up he barely remembers what happened. But a few clues remind him that he crashed the wasp into the soccer field (and destroyed it). Then he hid the wasp in the shed at school. No one is happy about that.
Things start to become more clear. Madison and Felix told him that the alien Ch’zar Collective took over the Earth some fifty years ago (after World War IV). They have put the entire Earth under mind control. But it doesn’t work on humans until they reach puberty. So all of the adults are under mind control–that explains a lot. No one is what they seem. But all of the kids go to school like normal and believe everything is fine.
When kids turn 13 they go to high school and the smartest kids go to the best schools. It is here that they are taken away and put under mind control. Ethan’s sister Emma is just about to go off to high school. And what about his parents? Are they who they say they are?
The military organization that Felix and Madison belong to are interested in Ethan. But of course he has disobeyed protocol from the get go. Nevermind that he doesn’t know anything about protocol since he is not in the military.
There’s a lot of familiar tropes about outsiders and the military brass, but it’s a pretty face-paced story. There are several bug battles. Some go on a little long, but most are fine.
The story was at times exciting but also kind of monotonous–yell, decide to disobey orders, fly around, etc. There was a lot of repetition, with the narrator hammering home some phrases and ideas like “Superior long-range strategy wins over superior immediate tactics.”
Peter Berkrot, the reader, is efficient and deliberate just like the soldiers in the story. There was nothing especially remarkable about his delivery.
With no lead up to the story, it was little a hard to get empathy for anyone, although we can all appreciate being under the thumb of someone.
I didn’t exactly love the story, but I am curious to see how the full story plays out. There are four books in the series, apparently. I can see how he could stretch it to four but I fear that there might be a lot of padding in the middle.
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