Well... we're told they lose their shit. We never actually witness the event, only have it explained that there are mobs roaming the streets looking for sleepers and sometimes killing suspicious people. That there are clashes with the police and absolute mayhem is going on... somewhere that we don't see. We don't have that one time where our main character gets singled out by the mob and she has to make a harrowing escape. Mostly she just hides in her apartment and stuff happens outside perhaps. We're told that it's dangerous to leave. Except for those times when she does leave and nothing bad happens. Which she does fairly often even though the city eventually gets quarantined and a curfew is in effect.
After seeing the rebel sleepers on television outing the whole operation it is suggested that they are all killed right afterward. At this point she is suddenly worried about her "friends" back at the abandoned farmhouse. Not sure why since she hasn't given them a second thought since the day she ran. She goes there to find that the farmhouse has been burned to the ground and no clue if anyone made it out alive.
She also goes to meet with CF. She's worried about him since it's about the umpteenth time she's gotten into an argument with him and vowed not to come back. He doesn't want to see her and for some reason after being treated so poorly by her so often he decides now is the time to become depressed about it. She does finally get into his apartment and they patch things up somewhat. I'm not certain why because that's the last we see of him.
The reason we don't see him anymore is because her true love suddenly shows up.
She happens to spot Grey on the street one day and carefully follows him. He goes to some abandoned storehouse. She knocks on the door and when he answers she pulls a gun on him. He doesn't appear to be concerned about that and he looks like hell. Inside there is a huge mess and a bunch of monitors set up like in the hidden room at the farmhouse.
He tells her his sister is missing and is under the impression that it's her fault. He thinks she told about their plans and the farmhouse and got everyone killed. He doesn't know our hero very well since doing something like that would require at least a little bit of initiative on her part. Lirael explains that she had nothing to do with it and says she'll help him find her sister.
After cleaning up the place, of course.
Through some convoluted something that made very little sense and involved watching security camera footage from the farmhouse (I don't know why there were cameras at the farmhouse or why they didn't burn up in the fire) she discovers where Elsie is. She shows it to Grey and in horror he rushes to the farmhouse. There he finds his sister buried nearby.
The security footage also somehow proved that Julie had betrayed the group!
Dun dun dunnnnn!
Oh, you don't remember who Julie was? Neither do I. Seems she was part of that alliance wayyyy back in the beginning. I'm pretty sure she was introduced at some point but she was such a wallpaper character I forgot her.
Doesn't matter anyway. It leads to nothing.
So some more meaningless events happens and eventually Lira decides it's too dangerous to stay at their apartment so she and her sister go and live with Grey. Cuz it's safer there or something and not because she totally wants to bone him.
Now by this time the war that all this has been building to is starting. Her and Grey just sorta try to ignore it for a while as best they can. This is going to be tough since they both have a limited supply of those pills they think they need to live and they both have a tracker inside their wrist. They have those pocket watches that make it impossible to be tracked, but those conveniently only have a limited time that they work and are going to fail soon. Also the trackers are starting to cause them pain. Something they do when they're supposed to check in. Every day they ignore it the pain gets progressively worse. I suppose, if you really had to, you could cut them out. I mean, it's in their wrist, not their brain. Worse comes to worse you could cut your whole hand off. That never occurs to either of them because they're morons.
Lira and Grey also have sex, because what else would you do in that situation?
Oh, before I forget. CF is dead.
Yeah, Lira sent Grey to check on him and he found the guy dead. Apparently by his own hand once he finished his book. Poor guy didn't get a goodbye scene or nothin'.
Still have no idea what his book is about.
Alright. So now Lira wants to try and get her sister somewhere safe. They try to leave the city but everywhere they go is guarded too well. Eventually she decides to return to her apartment and gather as much food and supplies as possible. Once there she runs into her aunt. After all this time her aunt finally picks up on that Lira isn't who she's supposed to be. The drunk fuck-up of the family figures out that she's a sleeper out of nowhere. Lira manages to calm her and convince her that she's not going to kill her. Then they all go back to her grandfather's orchard farm and she hides her sister and her aunt in the secret bunker hidden in the well.
You don't remember the secret bunker in the well? That's because this is the first time it's ever brought up. How's that for secret?
So we're getting to the point where the big event happens right? Where Lira finally finds the courage to do what's right and lead a rebellion? Or maybe makes that massive sacrifice that changes the course of everything?
That's what I thought too, but, uh, no.
No, no, no.
No.
Here's what actually happens.
You might have to sit down.
Lira and Grey finally return to their handlers after weeks of avoiding them. They tell some flimsy lies about why they took so long and the handlers buy it. They discover that people are coming through the portals from their world in droves. For some reason Grey has completely forgotten about his sister's goal of fighting against this exact event. They are put into squads and follow their orders to go though the city house by house and murder everyone.
No, I'm not fucking shitting you.
In fact, the first house they go to is her sister's best friend's home. When she knocks on the door her sister's friend recognizes her so he immediately opens the door only to get shot in the face.
No, I'm not fucking shitting you!
They shoot a defenseless and unsuspecting 8 year old in the face!
Now, the author makes sure to let us know that it wasn't Lira who shot him. One of the other sleepers shot him before she could warn him of the danger. That's what is actually written in the book, as if that absolved Lira in any way. (Not like "oh, hey, this guy is about to kill you" would have done the kid much good anyway) She totally felt bad about it as they swept through the house and butchered the rest of the family. As I recall, this includes a baby in a crib.
This is what happens people! I swear I'm not making this up! She goes on a turkey shoot and kills scores of defenseless civilians. Men, women, children. They go from city to city to do this. The sleepers are so swift and efficient they pretty much win the war single-handedly. What about the nations army? Police? Pffsh! I don't know! I guess they're all sleepers too.
To celebrate their victory they all get to go to a party in their honor! Yay! But something is starting to happen to the sleepers. They're all starting to get sick. Maybe it's the stress of all that difficult trigger pulling they had to do. Nope. When Lira gets to the party she happens across Madam, who decides to tell her, for no reason at all, that the pills they've all been taking for years was actually poison. Turns out it was a poison that didn't do anything until they activated it with the trackers in their wrists. Seems the folks who want to live on this new world aren't exactly keen on living there with a bunch of bloodthirsty, child murdering, psychopaths that they've trained. Who knew?
Finally! Let's kill this bitch!
But we're going to be denied that. Oh, yes, we are. This cunt is getting her happy ending whether I like it or not. So sit down, shut up, and let me torture you the rest of the story.
Even though the sleepers have all been taking this poison for years, it takes a long time to kill them, giving them plenty of time to do stuff. I suppose if they wanted to go on a revenge spree they could, but they don't. Anyway, Lira goes back to the bunker where her sister and aunt are.
Now, what I was hoping would happen was something that was set-up earlier. Remember how her handlers had mentioned that her sister's replacement was coming through the program? I thought maybe they had done it without her knowledge and her sister would off her. Or at least pose a problem. But no, her sister is just her sister (Or not sister, or whatever).
Anyway, she just gives them a pistol and says: "Go that way. There's a holdout of people from this world that we haven't killed yet. I know you have no training, have probably never fired a weapon before, and are essentially helpless, but I have faith that you'll make it past scores of troops who will shoot you on sight. If you're really lucky, maybe you won't die when my people overrun yours."
Or something to that effect.
This is as heroic as the character ever gets. Handing a gun to someone and asking them to take care of the problem themselves.
Afterward she hopes that perhaps the people of this world will band together and fight back. Somehow they might actually win. Gosh, that's a nice thought, but she won't be a part of that. Do you know why?
Bitch is gonna cut and run.
Remember those portals? Turns out you can go back through those to her old world. First we've heard of that, but... whatever, it makes sense. So her and Grey take a boat out to a portal (they're all underwater for some reason) and they jump through. The Earth on the other side is pretty much empty except for a handful of loonies and other folks that decided to stay in the ashes of a dying world. They get to pick any abandoned house they want to live in. Presumably one with lots of beds so they can spend all their time porking and not thinking about what an awful person it is that they've decided to shack up with. Oh, and that thing about folks disappearing in this world? Since their alternate is dead that won't happen to them. How convenient! They speculate they could live for another 75 years easy.
They also discover through a convenient pile of a scientist's research papers that there is actually a third Earth that is just starting to come into existence as this one fades. Suggesting that this is an endless cycle.
And they lived happily ever after.
But... what about the poison, you say? The poison that they've been taking for years and was activated by the tracker in their wrists? The poison that's been driving the plot for the past 30 pages? Is that what you want to know about?
AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER, GOD DAMNIT! Stop asking questions and accept it!
The Fuckin' End!
Thank you all for going with me on this painful journey.
Someone mentioned to me that it's the same concept and it has many of the same story beats as the TV show Fringe (just badly written), so it's also plagiarized.
And I never got the death of the main character that was my only driving motivation to read.
Someone mentioned to me that it's the same concept and it has many of the same story beats as the TV
There's a series I read once that, small spoiler, at least had that bit of catharsis. Very start of the first book the protagonist leads a group of bandits in the pillage and raping of a defenseless village. :X
There's a series I read once that, small spoiler, at least had that bit of catharsis. Very start of
It's one thing to start with the pillaging and raping, it's quite another to end with it. When a character is basically in the same place (character wise) at the end of a book as they were at the beginning, you wonder why the story was written at all. And to spend 450 pages on a character that has zero growth beyond getting older... that's just shit.
It's one thing to start with the pillaging and raping, it's quite another to end with it. When a ch
