Today dear friends you’re getting a two-fer…because I don’t know how to break them up. Last year during CB7 I read the first 6 books in this series and feel deeply, deeply in love with it. If you don’t remember, or if you don’t read my reviews–in short here’s the basic plot: in a single night most everyone gets attacked by these weird creatures (called ghouls by the survivors) who seem to be half zombie/half vampire. Neither of those terms get used, but that’s what I’m telling you that they’re like. From there we follow two ex-Army Rangers/best friends, several ladies who turn into extremely great leaders, an ex mercenary turned good guy and lots and lots of bad guys (civilian and otherwise). Because this is such a long series it’s hard to talk about it as individual books because there’s not really a complete plot arc in each book.
In the Spears of Laconia, we find out what happened to Will (HUGE SPOILER ALERT) after he was turned. He goes by the name Frank (like Frankenstein…which is infuriating because we all know that the monster is not Frank or Frankenstein…but whatevs) now because he’s not human but he hasn’t joined the hive mind of the ghouls and refuses to do their bidding. He works to protect his friends (without them knowing it’s him) and he’s working to figure out a way to take down the ghouls and save the human race from the inside out. (END SPOILER) Without going into great details the book follows all of our familiar characters who are all working on making a rendezvous but face obstacles throughout the book. We have Lara and the crew on the Trident (the boat) waiting to hear back from Danny, Gaby and Nate. She’s also trying to make contact with Jordan and Keo. She’s also missing her boyfriend Will, who has gone “missing” for a month now (we know what happened to him). Lara’s badass though; despite her heartbreak, despite not really knowing what to do, she’s become the leader. She makes the choices and her people follow her. She’s smart, she’s calculating and she’s fair. Lara’s pretty much the most awesome character ever…since Will. People on the mainland have found a new villain to deal with. Not only were they fighting the ghouls, the collaborators (humans who having willingly become slaves/donors/soldiers for the ghouls)…now they must fight Mercer’s army. Mercer, from what they’ ve learned is taking out human collaborators and killing men, women and children to destroy the ghoul’s food source. He’s killing indiscriminately and Danny, Gaby and Nate are in his way.
Book 8 in the series continues this war with the ghouls, the collaborators, and Mercer’s army. Lives are lost (Sisavath is not afraid to kill off main characters…which is good but it also makes me SAD), identities are revealed and alignments continue to shift. Lara has to decide whether or not to allow some of Mercer’s men defect or not and join her on the Trident. Is it a trap? Is it real? She still doesn’t know what has happened to her boyfriend Will (the saddest thing ever). Danny, Gaby and Nate are still in the same perilous situation they found themselves in throughout book seven (now with a little more hope!) and Keo, (after losing someone close to him) focuses all of his energy on finding and attempting to kill Mercer. But what will happen if he brings him down? Mercer has a lot of followers–people who are willing to bomb pregnant women and/or shoot children simply because they chose to submit to the ghouls in exchange for their lives. Will this stop this second war on human beings, or will it continue?
Rumor has it, book 9 is the final book in the series (my mom doesn’t believe it…”Who does that? Who writes NINE books…” is one of the things that she said to me. So maybe I’ll get a 10th book and not complain!). I’ll be sad when the series is over. Aside from Harry Potter this is the longest book series that I’ve ever read and I am fully invested in all the characters and looking forward to the hopeful triumph of all the characters that I’ve gotten to know throughout the series. My guess is that there’s going to be a lot of sacrifice along the way. I’m not ready for this (“luckily” ,the book isn’t written yet…so I have a while).