Title: Unearthed.
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner.
Format: Audio.
Publisher: Disney Hyperion.
Page count: 328 (12h 45min).
Release day: January 9th 2018.
Genre: YA, Science-fiction.
Rating: 4 stars.
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
When Earth intercepts a message from a
long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting
for. The Undying’s advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental
damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure
trove waiting to be uncovered.
For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the
discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study… as
long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don’t loot everything first. Mia and
Jules’ different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them
immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other
scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.
In order to penetrate the Undying temple and
reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient
race’s secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the
Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand
design that could spell the end of the human race…
My thoughts:
Me picking up this book was very random, I wanted to try out the online reservations of my library and this was the first one I saw. When I got the book I still decided to go with the audiobook, but I always like to be able to follow along in the actual book.
When this book first released I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read it since I wasn’t a huge fan of their Starbound trilogy (I only read the first two). But I’m very happy I picked this up, because I was very pleasantly surprised! I was just really in the mood for a relatively easy and action packed book, and this was exactly that!
From page one there is action, and it barely dies down throughout the book. There are of course a couple of scenes were there is not as much action, but it was good for the story! I just really liked the characters having to travel through this ‘temple’ and having to solve all the questions/quests (?), I just really enjoy those kind of stories!
The characters were enjoyable, they were not the best characters I’ve ever read, but I had no problems with them at all. Maybe they could have developed a bit more throughout the book. The romance is very obvious, but I didn’t think it was annoying!? Maybe because I expected it to be there!
We read this book from both Amelia and Jules’ perspective, and we know they are keeping secrets from each other. I normally don’t like this secret keeping, since you already know it will turn out badly. But the authors took a bit of a different route with this, so that was interesting!
Near the end there were some twists that I definitely did not see coming, but there were some very obvious ones. The very last paragraph I really did not see coming, and makes me very curious to the sequel!
The main reason for taking a star, is that the ending felt a bit dragged out. And I obviously really enjoyed this book, but it was not the best thing I ever read!
I already reserved the sequel at the library, and when I get that one I will again listen to the book. Since I really enjoyed listening and reading along!
I really recommend the audiobook, the narrators really fit the story. And since it is so action-packed it is very hard to put it down.
I want to read this sometime (: although there are some other books by both readers that I’ll probably get to first – Illuminae Files & Hunted. I hope you enjoy the second one as well.
I definitely recommend! I’ve already read book 2 by now (my reviews are always a bit late..) and also enjoyed it 🙂
You should definitely read the illuminae files! I personally was not a fan of hunted though..