The Undying – Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Undying by Amie Kaufman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Undying, the second book in the Unearthed duology feels like a very different book than its predecessor – although I still really enjoyed it. What made me love the first book was how it was a sci-fi version of Indiana Jones, full of exploration, discovery, and puzzles. Undying takes place in the aftermath of their discovery on Gaia and this review may be full of spoilers for the first book, so please don’t read it if you haven’t read that book.

Now that Mia and Jules have discovered the truth of the Undying, they are forced to reconcile what they thought they knew with this new truth. A good portion of the book revolves around their questions and struggles to figure out what the Undying want, who or what they truly are, and how they’re going to stop them. As a result, it’s a slower and less adventurous book than Unearthed. There’s more character development seen and you get a better feel for motivations than in the first book. As a result, I feel that it would appeal to different readers than the series appealed to with the first book.

I appreciated the fact that Mia and Jules were forced to work with two Undying because it gave the readers the opportunity to get to know them. It made the book more dimensional because we weren’t just thinking…. we have to stop the aliens, we’re grappling with the fact that maybe they’re not all bad? Maybe they want a life just like anyone else? And that humanizing factor brings a lot to this book. It is definitely a character-driven story, rather than a plot-driven one.

I found the plot to be enjoyable if a little slow. It was a long drawn out journey without a lot of memorable scenes. There were a number of obstacles that they had to find their way around, people that they had to avoid, and overall it didn’t lend anything to the story. There were very few scenes that ultimately needed to be there to add to the story, the character development, etc. They were just to get the characters to their destination but had Jules, Mia, and Jules’ cousin had no issues traveling to their destination I would not have felt that I missed out on much plot or character development-wise.

Overall, I really enjoyed this series and would recommend it to people – just keep in mind that the two books are incredibly different in tone and style.

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