Review: Undying

Undying by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I gave the previous book in this series, Unearthed, a five-star read a year ago. The strengths of that book are mostly still here: the breakneck pace, the well-drawn two main characters, the taut suspense and rising stakes. Unfortunately, this book disappointed me, and for one reason: the final explanation for the Undying, the (supposedly) vanished race who built a wormhole between Earth and Gaia and drew the protagonists (who were in search of alien technology to save Earth) to the latter, made no damn sense.

I'm not going to attempt to explain it here, both because of spoilers and because I still don't understand it, even after tossing it around and around in my head ever since reading the book. Suffice to say that it involves naturally occurring wormholes that traverse both space and time and a lost colony ship that cannot find another inhabitable planet throughout its centuries of travel, and yet cannot return to Earth--and works out one of the most tangled, convoluted ways to return to its home planet that I've ever read. I could feel my admiration for the story shrinking all during its final reveal, when I realized the authors really meant it with that logic- and science-defying mess. I've only rated it as high as I did because of my continued love for the first book, but I almost wish this one hadn't been written. Some mysteries don't need to be solved, certainly not in the manner described here.

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