I have mixed feelings about this book. I both loved it and hated it. On one hand, I thought it was an amazing sequel to Peeps. Scott Westerfeld is a great writer, with a very hypnotizing and mesmerizing writing style. His characters are real and well-developed, and I loved many of them. Scott knows how to grab my attention and keep me there. I really enjoyed the whole band thing- Westerfeld managed to capture the power of music down on paper in a way that no one has been able to do before. The book was suspenseful, exciting, thrilling, action-packed, and left a huge impact on me.Yet, this book was also highly disturbing and made me very angry several instances throughout. The whole Peeps disease thing is cool, but sometimes it can get really creepy- especially with all the cats having it now. And then there was the evil monster worm thing.Ah, yes. Let's talk about THAT.That was what entirely ruined the book for me. I mean, come on. PLEASE. The world is coming to an end not because of creepy cannibals but because of...an evil people-eating giant monster WORM?!?!?!?! Um, okay. No thank you. That's just too cartoon-y, mwa ha ha Dr. Evil type thing for me. I couldn't imagine it, couldn't make a sense of it in my head whenever the worms came up. Everything else in the book seemed so real, but this was just like, "WHAT?!?!" It was like the whole book was a movie with real-people actors, and then all of a sudden the worms are animated pictures that suddenly appear in the real-life movie. They don't fit and they ruin the book. It was MUCH better when the Peeps were the villains.Other Pet Peeves About This Book/Things That Made Me Mad:(Warning: Some spoilers below)-Pearl is my favorite character. All along, I'd been waiting for her to get together with Moz. AND THEN MOZ HAD TO GO AND MAKE OUT WITH MINERVA!!!! B****!!!!! BOTH OF THEM!!! I HATE YOU, MINERVA AND MOZ!! YOU CAN BOTH GO DIE FOR DOING THAT TO PEARL!! HOW DARE YOU!!! Lol, sorry for that rant. I just had to get it out there...Yeah. As you can tell, I'm really pissed that Pearl didn't get to be with the boy she was in love with, and got her heart broken. (God, Westerfeld really hates me. He has a bad habit of repeatedly torturing my favorite characters!! Dess was my favorite character from Midnighters, and Scott had to make her excluded and left out all the time. And now Pearl!! Gee, Scott- what have I ever done to YOU????)-God. MINERVA!!! She should go die. I HATE her. HOW CAN SHE DO THAT TO PEARL???? GO OUT WITH MOZ?!?! Doesn't she KNOW one of the first rules of friendship- you DON'T go out with your best friend's crush, even if you like him! GGAAHH. SHE'S A GREAT BIG B***** AND I WILL KILL PEARL IF SHE EVER FORGIVES MINERVA!!!!!-It really bothered me how a lot of things were left unfinished. Like how we never found out how Moz was getting the money to pay Alana Ray. I really wanted to know if my suspicions were correct, and if Moz was stealing the money, and I was holding my breath and hoping all throughout the book- but I never found out! That really annoyed me. Also, the Black Death thing was never confirmed- the book never said what disease it was. I mean, if you're going to bring up a bunch of questions, can't you at least do me the courtesy of ANSWERING them?!?!-What REALLY made me mad was how everyone just shrugged and accepted the supernatural, just like that, when that's NOT the nature of humans. I mean, come on. There are vampires that seem to somehow exist now, and giant evil worm monsters who are eating people. So does everybody freak out and stuff, like expected? NOO!!! NOBODY freaks out!! Everyone just goes, "Oh, it's evil monsters that shouldn't exist. That sucks. Let's all save ourselves and fight them now." Uhhh...WHAT?!? That is NOT how normal humans react to the supernatural!! IF that happened in real life, NORMAL humans would be running around screaming, thinking it was all a hallucination or something. They WOULDN'T accept it right away and they wouldn't actually HELP get RID of the monster, like all the unrealistic humans in The Last Days did.Another thing- I thought the pace was a bit TOO fast, especially towards the end. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a fast, exciting book, but it wasn't just that. Events started flashing by without Scott Westerfeld paying much attention to them, and he just sort of zipped through things in a second, making me feel like everything was happening at once and way too fast, like the last chunk of the book was frozen on the fast-forward button on a remote. Wow, I realize I've been ranting for a long time on this book, and most of it's all just rambling...whoops. Anyway, basically, I thought that overall, this book was pretty good, but there were just a lot of flaws and gaps that ticked me off. I have just summarized this whole entire review in one sentence. Wow. :DIt's weird- Scott Westerfeld seems to always lose his grip towards the end of all his "series" or whatever. Like, he had a great trilogy going with Midnighters, but then he blew it with Blue Noon. Peeps and The Last Days were good, but the ending chunk makes me hesitant. I think the only time he DIDN'T do this was in the Uglies series.Anyway...you should read The Last Days if you've read Peeps, because it's interesting to know what happens next, and because Pearl is awesome. But DON'T read The Last Days if you haven't read Peeps, because you'll be utterly lost and confused and mad and you probably won't read Peeps because of that. So, I'll just end this incredibly and unexpectedly long review by saying...The End. There. ;D
Most everyone calls The Last Days a sequel to Westerfeld's novel Peeps. I suppose that, loosely, this is true. For my part, I think of this novel as more of a companion to Peeps because the main characters are completely different (don't worry though, characters from Peeps do turn up), the structure of then novel is different, and because the only way to get the most out of either book is to read the two of them together, back-to-back. So, this is a sequel in the same way that The Two Towers was (trick statement! Tolkien meant the Lord of the Rings trilogy to be one book but it was too long and written before the days of ginormous novels).Suffice it to say, The Last Days is a very different book from its predecessor despite continuing the same story. Most of these differences are structural. Westerfeld again employs first person narration, but this time he has five narrators. Each chapter is labeled with a character's name and told from his or her point of view. Writing a novel in this way is incredibly difficult because you have to take into account continuity while also making sure you don't get redundant and trying to make each character sound unique. Westerfeld does all of that. Perfectly. In this novel, Westerfeld's narrators are in the interesting position that they know less than the readers (this is why reading Peeps first is so important). The whole vampire thing is an unknown for everyone. As is the issue of a pending apocalypse.But that doesn't tell you much about the story.It all starts with a girl who wants to make a band. Pearl sees the weird things going on in the city. The sanitation crisis. The increasing number of stray cats. Then there are the rats that are slowly taking over the subway system. And Brooklyn. Then there's Pearl's friend, Minerva, who's been acting pretty weird herself. Pearl decides that the best way to help her friend, and maybe get through the craziness, is to start a band.Soon Pearl finds the perfect band members. And they're a great band. But strange things happen when Minerva starts to sing. Making everyone wonder if the band's music is the one thing that can stop the apocalypse. Or start it.There are very few male writers who can convincingly narrate from a female point of view. Scott Westerfeld is one of the few. Instead of making the novel seem choppy, or the characters under-developed, Westerfeld's split narration makes every character much more dimensional. The story is about vampires, of course. And music. But it's also about friendship and relationships. Westerfeld artfully describes the vicious cycle some friendships have when one friend is always taking whatever the other has to give. He also shows how, sometimes, you have to keep those friends even when it's the last thing you want to do. Like Peeps, parts of this book are a little gross. Raw meat does turn up on several plates. Some narrators are more "unique" than others. But taken as a whole it all kind of works to make a really fun, really exciting book.At its basic level this is a story about a band trying to make it big when everything else is falling apart. Along the path to fame, they just might save the world.
What do You think about The Last Days (2006)?
It's always refreshing to return to a familiar setting. Even if that setting is a desolate, disease-ridden New York, where vampires roam the streets and there's a "sanitation crisis" where trash is piled in the streets. Good old New York.This is a continuation of Peeps of sorts, though we're introduced to a new cast of characters. And they're an odd bunch—a bunch of high school kids (and one street performer) aiming to make it big in the music industry. Everything falls into place for them, which seems too easy, until... well... there's always a reason to be divulged later.So, two-thirds of this book is getting the band together. And the sense that creepy things are happening. And there's some high school drama—overprotective parents; random crushes—that are usually boring and innocent until you remember our setting: it's not exactly paradise. And maybe there's a reason your parents keep you locked in your bedroom if you're showing signs of being diseased. But we're going to sneak out anyway.Even though I know this is a two-book series, I kept on wondering if it would continue. Because it wasn't until the end that the real good stuff happened: The battles and the controversy, and the band members starting to get what's going on in their beloved city. But no, it was wrapped up quickly and a little too nicely. Not saying I didn't enjoy it, because we got to see some of our old characters from Peeps and see some gruesome things. But it took a long time to get there.I quite enjoy the world of Peeps, and I'm a music nerd myself. It's a quick, fun continuation of this gritty world, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of it—even though I know this is actually the end.
—Angela
Probably would give more like 2.5. It was "ok" but I spent the first 1/2 of the book wondering what this one had to do with the book it was allegedly a sequel to. About 3/4 of the way through you finally come across some characters from the previous book and then after chapters and chapters of "building" it's over in a few pages. The story was "ok", the characters were "ok", the ending was "ok". I just think this had a lot more potential than it actually delivered.And if I ever have to hear the word "fawesome" again I think I'll puke.
—Heather G Gentle
I never wrote a review for Peeps, but it was a different type of book that I had read before, and I LOVED it. It took me a few chapters to get back into the swing of things, since it had been so long since I read Peeps. I loved loved loved the way Westerfeld put us back into the action with The Last Days. The sequel picks up not with Cal, our Peeps hero, but with a growing cast of characters living in Manhattan after the "virus" had already been spreading. The book managed to both surprise me and give me exactly what I was expecting. The Last Days is a great sci-fi suspense thriller that kept me on my toes (metaphorically speaking). I couldn't put it down, and was bummed when I read the final page, since I was ready to be finished with these characters and this world.
—Pamela Simon
