Review: Undying - Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Earth's fate rests in their hands. Trapped aboard the Undying's ancient spaceship and reeling from the truth they've uncovered, Mia and Jules are desperate to warn their home about what's coming.

After a perilous escape in an alien craft, they crash-land on Earth's surface only to realise the awful truth: No one believes in the Undying threat in orbit.

With no choice but to take matters into their own hands, they must escape custody of the powerful International Alliance in order to discover the true mission of the Undying, and how to stop them. On the run, fugitives among their own people, they must journey across Europe to stop an alien invasion, prevent a horrific plague, and save the people they love.

From the mountains of Spain to the streets of Prague, the epic conclusion to the Unearthed series is a white-knuckle ride that will keep readers guessing until the final page.

Unearthed Duology:
Unearthed
Undying

Visit Amie Kaufman's website or Meagan Spooner's website for more information

Review:
Undying is the final book in the Unearthed duology and gives us a chance to find out what happened to Mia and Jules when they were onboard the alien spaceship headed back to earth. They're the only humans alive who know that the ship is a Trojan horse bringing an army of alien invaders with it but they've got no way of letting anyone know what is going on unless they can get off the ship and back on earth soil.

After escaping on a landing shuttle and picked up by the International Alliance you'd think it would be easy for them to explain what was happening and get some help with the situation. Unfortunately for them nobody is willing to listen to their explanation and the IA doesn't believe that the world is about to be invaded. If the IA won't listen Mia and Jules have no other option but to try and stop the Undying on their own but to do that they're going to need answers that only Jules' father has access to.

I really loved the Indiana Jones feel to the first book which was all about exploring an alien temple on a far distant planet solving puzzles along the way so I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed to be back on earth for the sequel! It made perfect sense though and it was fun to see Jules and Mia thrown into a completely different situation and have to figure out how to evade the authorities long enough to get the answers they needed. Their journey across Europe was fun to follow and we also get to meet some fun new characters in this one so I enjoyed having a larger cast for this story.

There were some shock revelations about the Undying at the end of the previous book that had left me with loads of questions about where they came from and what their plans were. Everything is slowly revealed in this book and there were definitely some twists that I didn't see coming. The story was very cleverly plotted and it was fun trying to unravel all the clues before the big reveal. This really was a great follow up to the first book and a satisfying conclusion to the series.

Source: Received from Turnaround in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
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Hardback:

Review: Unearthed - Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

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...

Unearthed Duology:
Unearthed
Undying

Visit Amie Kaufman's website or Meagan Spooner's website for more information

Review:
As soon as I saw that Unearthed was being pitched as "Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft set in Space" I knew I had to read it, especially since I loved the Starbound trilogy that was also co-authored by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. I have to say I think they were spot on with the Indiana Jones comparison and this was such a fun adventure story.

Set in a not too distant future where humans have wrung pretty much every last resource out of the Earth things aren't looking too great for our survival. Then scientists manage to intercept a message from an extinct alien race, the Undying, which gives us access to technology far beyond our own capabilities, including a way to travel to their distant planet. For scientists and scholars this opens up a unique opportunity to study an alien culture and bring home potentially world changing technology but only if they can get there before scavengers pick the planet clean for profit.

Jules is a scholar with something to prove, his father worked on translating the original alien message and Jules has studied his father's documents tirelessly. He's determined to reach Gaia and search for a missing temple his father told him about. Mia on the other hand is one of the scavengers and she desperately needs to recover enough alien tech to buy her passage on a ship home. The unlikely allies are thrown together after they're set upon by another group of scavvers, they both have very different goals for their time on planet but unless they find a way to work together they might both find they're stuck there permanently.

Unearthed is an action packed story full of booby traps and puzzles just waiting to be solved. Jules and Mia are pretty much opposites in every way but that works in their favour as they both bring different but equally important skills to the table. Jules is a geek who has studied everything about the Undying and who has memorised maps of the planet but it is Mia who has the street smarts and survival skills to get them where they need to be. I enjoyed seeing both of their points of view, they're great characters in their own ways and it was easy to understand their motivations even when you didn't always agree with the choices they had made. I'm not quite sold on the romance yet but it's been pretty slow build so far so there is definitely potential for the next book.

It was a lot of fun seeing them explore the temples and it was so easy to picture what was happening, I actually think this could be turned into a fabulous movie! There were some really unexpected revelations at the end and I'll warn you now that the ending is quite the cliffhanger but I'm totally on board for the sequel and can't wait to see how the story ends.

Source: Received from Turnaround in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
If you have reviewed this book on your blog please leave a link to your review in the comments & I'll add the link here.

Hardback: