Destination Unknown

Remnants #2

by K.A. Applegate

After waking from their five-hundred-year sleep, the eighty remaining members of the human race have awoken, and Jobs, 2Face, Mo'Steel and the others are not sure if they have arrived on another planet or if they are still dreaming.

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction, Middle Grade, Horror, Fantasy, Dystopia

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

also published under the name Katherine Applegate

Reviews

[Trevor Abbott · Rating 5 out of 5]

We go from vivid descriptions of all the corpses on the ship to a three year old child’s eyeballs liquifying and leaking out his empty sockets to a lady who is obsessed with Jane Austen and acts like she’s in one of her novels to psycho baby (who ONLY chuckles) controlling his mother like a puppet psychically to grave robbing to someone getting eaten alive by worms (inside out) to stranger things season 4 Max in the graveyard moment to the Tower of Babel exploding to aliens.

This book is 150 pages…

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars! AAAAND YEP, THIS IS A BOOK THAT GAVE ME NIGHTMARES AS A TEENAGER. If I had a "body horror" shelf, this would go there, but in the meantime I've put it under "nightmare fuel" and "horror and terror". I counted off the nightmare elements of this book to a friend last night, aghast:

1. TAMARA'S BABY. NOPE NOPE #NOPE SO MANY LEVELS OF NOPE. I can't even really talk about it without cringing and feeling sick. Pregnancy is already key for the horror genre -- see Rosemary's Baby, Alien, Species, Splice, The Dark Tower, whatever, there's lots -- and its EYELESS FACE AND SHARP TEETH AND CHUCKLES AND HOW IT MOVES ITS MOTHER LIKE A MEAT-PUPPET. Just, no.

2. Billy Weir and what happens to him. :( 500 years of paralysis and being stuck in your own mind, forever awake. This is some existentially horrifying shit.

3. The flesh-eating WORMS in BIG BILL'S LEG. This is specifically what messed me up. I just can't with insects under skin (so that scarab-burrowing scene in The Mummy is also terrible for me, fyi). And the same damn thing happens in Michael Grant's Gone series, so I CAN GUESS WHICH ONE OF THE MARRIED COUPLE CONTRIBUTED THIS TO REMNANTS. >:|

The body count is high -- you do get the impression that 'no one is safe', and the stakes are real. Structurally, I think the Remnants series is actually fairly similar to KAA's Everworld, in that it's a motley group of people who never asked to be together, and they're trying their best to survive in a completely alien, bizarre environment. Although I can already foresee that I might have an even bigger problem remembering what specifically happens in each book, since they're not divided by narrator nor mythological pantheon.

My favourite quote from this whole book:

"We are all that's left of the human race. We have to act like humans. Right?"

"We have to survive," Olga said with finality.

"No, we don't," Violet Blake said. "We don't have to survive, we have to be worthy of survival. I know you're a biologist and maybe you see survival in purely evolutionary terms, but we've evolved beyond being just another bunch of primates, haven't we? Isn't human culture, human morality part of our evolution? Isn't it part of what defines us as a species? If we give that up and start behaving like savages and survive by being savages, have we saved human life or just devolved into some lesser species?"

I bring it up because this question, and this theme, is absolutely central to The 100 (which I'm going to keep namedropping, because the plot is relatively similar to Remnants). Case in point, this exchange occurs in Season 1:

KANE: "I choose at every turn and at any cost to make sure that the human race stays alive."
ABBY: "That’s the difference between us, Kane. I choose to make sure that we deserve to stay alive."

And yet... In this book, they were wrong? This is maybe one of my low-key favourite things about Destination Unknown: Our ragtag heroes decide to pull a heroic medical maneuver, amputating Big Bill's leg to save him from the worms when the rest of the team is happy to let him die. So they get to it, with sub-par tools and no real medical equipment! Except... They chop off the leg, Violet gets infested with a worm when trying to tie off his vein, they have to chop off her finger, Bill starts screaming that the worms are still in him, and they have to run away from him and leave him to die anyway. Which, if you stop to think about it: what the hell else did we expect to happen? It was such a naive, idealistic attempt to be heroes™ and it failed miserably, which sets the stage nicely for what sort of series Remnants will be, I think.

I've been trying to figure out who's depicted on the cover this time. Violet, maybe? She's a fun new addition (I already ship her and Mo, and Jobs/2Face ahhh), although her latent sexism against other women is grating. I'm too exhausted to really articulate my thoughts on that front, but maybe I'll get into it later.

More quotes I liked, since I actually dog-eared some pages this time:

Of course, there was the question of how exactly they were going to get out. [...] The whole idea had been that the ship would land horizontally, like it was supposed to do. Then the hibernation berths would open and the people would simply step out and promptly fall any number of feet to the nearest external bulkhead, then, having survived those injuries, would crawl to the only exit door.

Idiots.

***

Violet was a freak in the world of school, because to reject a world dominated by soulless technology, a world where no thought ever seemed to go unspoken, where no feeling went unexpressed, a world devoid of politesse, a world without delicacy or tact, to reject that world was seen as unnatural, perhaps even dangerous. When she refused to wear a link even her teachers turned on her, demanding to know how she could stand being so "out of touch."

[NOTE FROM JULIE: This was just a very on-point herald of modern-day technological alienation and the effect of social media, despite the fact that it was written in 2001, long before it became ubiquitous.

Also: The actual narrative 'voice' in Violet's sections sounds different, slightly wordier and more Austenian. It's a nice touch. You can hear the personality of each character in their POV sections, imo.]

***

D-Caf sat by himself, too, ignored, excluded, shunned. According to Jobs, D-Caf had fired the shot that killed the mission's copilot. A killer, though he seemed more pathetic than dangerous to Violet. He kept smiling at people, looking for an acceptance that no one would offer. He was jumpy, energetic, a shaggy puppy who couldn't understand why he'd been spanked and put in the corner.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I placed this specific installment on my horror shelf along with the science fiction and YA shelves because good God, there are some horrific images and concepts in this book.

As we saw in Volume #1 with the destruction of Earth, KA isn't one to pull punches. This book begins with the survivors awakening after 500 years, on an alien world so bizarre it can't be of natural origin--but first they discover that many of the original Eighty did not survive the trip.

THINGS THIS BOOK BURNED INTO MY MEMORY: 1. "Cheese", or the matter-of-fact term for berths whose occupants have been overgrown by the black mold from Hell: "The berth was filled with what could only be fungus...generations of it. Like bread mold...Jobs' hands shook. He reached to open the lid...no, he couldn't. There was nothing in there for him to see. Let it be an undifferentiated horror...He didn't want to see his father's skull, his teeth grinning up through the rot, no."

2. The worms that eat holes through some of the passengers like moths chewing through a sweater. I'll spare you a description of this one.

3. Tamara's baby. I'm normally not susceptible to pregnancy horror. But. Silent, eyeless, telepathic babies that seem to control their mothers like a marionette? Yeah, that gets to me a bit. As I recall, it gets even creepier later on as Tamara and the baby do their best System Shock 2 impression.

4. Billy Weir paralyzed in his own body for 500 years as his mind remains totally aware. KA's really a fan of this particular brand of existential horror, not to mention really really good at evoking it. Shudder.

It's true there's not a whole lot of plot here, and what there is is mostly getting the characters from Point A to B to set up the next book. But I have to give it credit for packing so much originality, weirdness, and just plain creepy into 150 pages.

[Kelsie Stelting · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love this series - keeps you on the edge of your seat. My 9yo wanted to read extra chapters each night!

[Joshua Glasgow · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the very end of the first ‘Remnants’ book, 80 people are placed into extended hibernation for a trip through space following the sudden destruction of the Earth; they’re the “remnants” of the human race, so to speak, and will travel indefinitely—until the rocket ship they’re on locates an inhabitable planet, I guess. Except one of the 80, a boy named Billy Weir, remains conscious. His body is in hibernation, but his mind is not. I’ve only read two of the books in the ‘Gone’ series by Michael Grant (half of the husband-wife team, along with Katherine Applegate, who write under the pen name K.A. Applegate), but there is a very similar occurrence in that series: a girl is killed in that book, yet remains conscious even in death. Both series take that to its horrifying, logical conclusion. This is the very first page of DESTINATION UNKNOWN:

It took less than a year for Billy Weir to lose his mind.
He lay still, absolutely still, unable to move a muscle, unable to move his eyes, unable to control his breathing, paralyzed, utterly, absolutely paralyzed.
The technology of the hibernation berth had worked. It was ninety-nine-point-nine-percent successful. It had stopped his heart, his kidneys, his liver. It had stopped every system, down to the cellular level.
It had failed to still his mind.
The system supplied his miniscule needs for oxygen and water and nutrition. But it did nothing for the sleepless consciousness imprisoned in the all-but-dead body.
He raved silently. He hallucinated. He regained his sanity and lost it and regained it as the years passed, as the decades passed, as the very definition of madness became irrelevant.
He was in hell. He was in heaven. He floated, disembodied. He was chained to his own corpse. He rose and sank. He thought and imagined, and he almost flicked out, extinguished.
He begged for death.
And all of it over again, again, again. Time was nothing, leaping by in years and decades, crawling past so slowly that each millisecond might be a century.

Jesus Christ, what a way to begin a book. Trust me, that is far from the last horrific thing to occur within these 151 pages. After this prologue, Jobs, the first character introduced in the previous book, awakens from hibernation after what, to him, seems like just a day. He will soon learn that he’s actually been asleep for more than FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. That’s five hundred years Billy Weir was awake and losing his mind. Jobs struggles to get his body moving but once he’s able to rise he goes to check on his parents, who joined him on the trip. Peering in his father’s hibernation pod, he sees

…something fibrous, as if the berth had been filled with . . .
Jobs reeled. His stomach heaved with nothing to expel. A weird moan came form his dry throat.
The berth was filled with what could only be fungus of some sort, generations of it, filling the berth. Like bread mold. That’s how it looked. Green and black. No shape visible within, nothing human, just a six-foot box filled with decay.
Jobs’s hands shook. He reached to open the lid.
No. No. No, he couldn’t. No, there was nothing in there, nothing for him to see. Let it be an undifferentiated horror, don’t let some faint outline of the familiar appear. He didn’t want to see his father’s skull, his teeth grinning up through the rot, no.
He turned away.

Again, trust me, that’s just scratching the surface of the disturbing goings-on in this book. That’s just up to page 5! I want to share more, but I don’t want to give everything away. Instead, let me share a few of the quotes that stood out to me about the way Jobs felt as he and the few survivors awake and struggle to come to grips with… well, with everything they’ve had to endure up to this point:

- “He felt like a mountain was falling on him. Like a man standing on the beach as a tidal wave hits. He was being buried alive, smothered, crushed. Way too much.”
- “He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to wake up and not be here. It was too much, too much. Impossible to process a tenth of it, a billionth of it. His hands were shaking. A result of the hibernation? No. A result of waking up and seeing.”

I’m obviously a big fan—nobody is reading the ‘Remnants’ series in the year 2024 if they aren’t—but still, I have to say: I think Applegate writes some of the most incisive, hard-hitting lines of narrative. Those are two good examples. She/they (although I suspect this writing comes mostly from Katherine) really do an extraordinary job putting to words the numb feeling of grief and trauma unresolved. It awes me.

This book is essentially all action. It’s very propulsive and, in my view, a big step above THE MAYFLOWER PROJECT. I saw some Goodreads reviewers down on the book because the characters are mostly reacting to a series of weird events and the fact that the book just introduces a whole slew of ideas without actually doing anything with them beyond introducing them and piquing the reader’s curiosity. I don’t necessarily disagree with those sentiments, but as with THE MAYFLOWER PROJECT, I’m still willing to forgive that because of the fact that this is a 14-book series.

Incidentally, one of the weird things that happens in this book is that they discover they are on a planet which is perfectly divided into two halves: one in stark black-and-white, the other in a splash of vivid color. One of the survivors, a girl named Violet Blake, observes that it’s based off of Earth artwork—the black-and-white taken from Ansel Adams’ photography, the color mimicking the work of painter Pierre Bonnard. This suggests that the environment was created for their benefit by some alien intelligence. In the evening, the clouds are amethyst-colored and there are orange swirls in the sky. Violet is fascinated by this. “Was this scene an actual painting?” she wonders, “Or were the aliens riffing on a theme? It might be Bonnard, or not. Was whoever or whatever operated the machinery on this strange world now composing its own art?” I draw attention to this moment in particular because it reminds me strongly of Richard Powers’ PLOWING THE DARK which was published one year before DESTINATION UNKNOWN and which I read in May of this year. In that book, characters create a sort of generative-A.I. virtual reality based on the work of various artists which “invents” new worlds and situations based on the input it received. It’s very similar! I guess there’s not much to say on that beyond the parallel itself, but I say it all the time: I love finding connections like these between the books I read at “random”.

Overall, my read of books #1 and #2 of the ‘Remnants’ series has left me fairly impressed. While I understand some of the more critical response, my reaction has been largely positive. I’m eager to find out where the story goes, what happens next. I had originally bought just a set of the first 12 books, which was foolish. As soon as I finished DESTINATION UNKNOWN, I rushed to buy the last two. And I’m already thinking about which K.A. Applegate series I should read next. (I’m considering the ‘Making Out’ series if I can find all the books.)

P.S. Like the first book, the cover of this one—a blond girl on a rust-colored background, holding herself and doubled over in pain while shafts of light shoot out of her body making pinpoint holes à la Carrigan Crittenden at the end of Casper (1995)—is not an image of an event that occurs in the book. Unlike THE MAYFLOWER PROJECT, though, I think this cover is kind of cool instead of merely generic. Will this trend continue through the series? Covers that are “cool” but not representative of the book? That’s… a weird choice.

[Tanja · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It took less than a year for Billy Weir to lose his mind."

So begins the second book in the Remnants series. 500 years after the events of the first book, the Eighty have arrived. The ones that are still alive are waking up. But everything is even weirder than expected: the shuttle has landed vertically (and that shouldn't be possible), the world they ended up on is partially black and white and partially full of colors and there’s a very strange baby among the survivors.

This book is a lot scarier than the first one. The survivors have arrived somewhere, and now they’re trying to figure out what to do and how to survive in this strange place. Not easy when there are aliens challenging you to battle and worms that really like the way you taste. Humans being humans, of course there’s also the fight for power. Even when there are so few of them left, someone has to be in charge. It’s actually really sad. In my review of the first book, I complained about kids being sent to space, but now it turns out that it would be better if there were more kids, because they had a bigger chance of surviving the trip. (But why did Yago have to survive? He’s the worst character and he needs to disappear.)

The strangest characters were Billy Weir and the baby. The biggest difference between them is that Billy is strange but still seems good and the baby seems quite evil. I don’t think I ever read a book with an evil baby before. It’s interesting but insanely creepy. Violet Blake turned out to be a great character, much smarter and a lot more useful than I expected. Her little speech about saving humanity was surprising but awesome.

I suppose the series will just keep getting weirder and scarier. I can’t wait :)

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just like the last book, this is a structureless glob of events. The characters have no particular goal, they're just reacting to a situation that they don't understand and an environment they have no control over. This book is better than The Mayflower Project in this regard, because it at least sets up a longer-term conflict in which the characters will have agency, and it actually feels like the events matter. But in terms of a structure that could pull a kid in, I'm just not seeing it here. I also think this is way too dark and cynical for a kid's book. I know that kids don't tend to be freaked out by this kind of thing the same way adults are, but some kids would certainly be horrified by this, and the ones that wouldn't would probably be turned off by the humorless cynicism. Applegate has said in interviews that she was depressed around the time of this series' writing, and... yeah, it shows. This book seems to revel in showing humanity at its worst, and creating situations where the bad guys are rewarded and the good guys are punished for doing the right thing. But the thing is, it's not even great as a horror book for adults, because the writing doesn't fully commit to making it horrifying. There are all of these childish turns of phrase, weird little similes that remind you that this was, somehow, conceived with kids in mind. The result is that this book doesn't quite work for any particular audience.

So why the three-star rating, instead of the two that I gave to The Mayflower Project? Well, this book is at least a lot weirder and more creative than that one. The tone doesn't quite feel right for a horror story, but it is distinctly there, and I honestly can't say I've ever read anything quite like this. It's almost hard to believe that Scholastic allowed this to be published, for all the horrifying violence that happens in it - above and beyond even Animorphs, which at least had lots of comic relief to balance things out. This book... it's not just that it's dark, it's off-putting. The characters are really well-developed and interesting to read about, but a lot of them are unusual, on the fringes of society. It's exactly the kind of thing that makes a great find from a used bookstore; a genuinely unusual story that could've only come about in this exact set of circumstances, that we'll never see again. I don't like this book exactly - certainly, I found it too depressing and horrifying to enjoy at all - but I am kind of intrigued by it. It's immersive, I guess. And there are some excellent character moments. Violet in particular is just fascinating; her interactions with her mother and with Jobs are very well-written, and explore gender in a way that I can't say I've ever seen in a kids book before.

On the whole, I would basically only recommend this to die-hard Applegate and Grant fans, who just need to see what the hell this is, and people who are so jaded of both kids books and typical horror tropes that they'll be entertained by reading something off-the-wall weird. This series was never going to be a success - it's sort of a miracle it exists at all. But even though, like I said, I don't really like it, some part of me is glad it exists.

[Despair Speaking · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are unmarked spoilers in this review. You have been warned!!!

The ship holding the last remnants of the human race has finally reached a destination... Jobs wakes up from his long slumber weak. He falls asleep a couple of times before he could finally look around the place. He finds out that his parents are dead and only his little brother is left. He falls asleep again and is forced awake by 2Face from the first book. They go to the cockpit and reunite with Mo'Steel. They see the new planet through the windows and what they see aren't very encouraging. They also learn that they had been in space for centuries! They freak out, except for Mo'Steel. They then decide to see how many people made it to the new world and once everyone is up and ready, head out to the new world.

I raised the rating from three stars in the first book to four stars since this was very interesting and enjoyable and I could not put this down. When I finally did finish it, I craved for the next book and that's a good sign, right?

The new world was as mysterious as it was baffling. I can't help but compare it to a kid playing with Leggos; it's as if the world is still under construction and can change anytime. That's probably the reason why it's so dangerous. You're never sure what to expect and, just when you're used to one setting, it shifts to another.

The characters were very diverse and I loved that. If the world was not taking my attention, the characters were. The main characters in the first book have returned: Jobs, the smart computer guy, Mo'Steel, the adrenaline junkie good at Math, and 2Face, the tough Asian. Even some of the minor characters with the potential of becoming major characters in the upcoming books managed to survive, like Tamara, the pregnant Marine (amazingly she managed to give birth to the baby while she was inside her berth!), Yago, the arrogant son of the President, and Billy Weir. I am especially looking forward to more Yago and Billy Weir. I don't like Yago, he is a prick after all, but he is fun to read and one must always keep an eye on the manipulative ones!

The aliens... how do I describe them? I think there are more races that are coming so I doubt the violent race they encountered, nicknamed the Riders due to the hover glides they're riding, is the one that brought that ship there, as the ship was in a position that suggested it was brought to the planet by... something. The Riders are nothing special so far but I'm expecting a lot from them and the upcoming races.

All in all, Destination Unknown escaped the second book syndrome and promises more awesomeness to come!!!

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

  Let’s start this with the cover again, shall we? What you see on the cover is not exactly what happened in the book, but is once again a made-palatable sort-of version of what is inside. While The Mayflower Project could have been anyone on the cover (I think it was Jobs), I think that the girl on this cover is Miss Violet Blake, one of the Eighty who boarded the ship. Maybe that’s supposed to be solar/space radiation piercing her?

  While The Mayflower Project was setting up all the characters and why they were gathered together and sent off, Destination Unknown sets up the first new stage of this series, the first new game field, if you will. The Eighty have arrived … somewhere, a world of color splotches next to stark shades of white and gray, a world where the hoped-for and the unreal collide. The Destination is unexpected, it is tangible despite its impossibility, it is welcomed yet feared – those who survived the journey, the Wakers, are in a world where the rules are not consistent with what they once knew, and it is up to them to determine not only how to survive, but also who they will be as the last of humanity.

  The world is strange, and it is seriously the stuff of nightmares. As much as there is beauty in the scenery, there are utter horrors inside the shuttle (and later outside), horrors they create a jargon for to protect themselves: “cheese,” “crater,” “facelift.” There are other horrors as well, things that they do not even try to name nor even describe – they acknowledge what they see, determine it is seriously creepy, and do their best not to think of it any more than is necessary like Tamara and her baby, connected by a thin skin rope from her shoulder to his side, him without any eyeballs in his eye sockets yet he still seems to see, and they are linked like puppet and puppeteer. I find myself wondering how the baby was “born” and mother & child got “reattached,” or if it was some weird transformation of the umbilical cord, or what. The imagery is visceral, terrifying, and I would say even outdoes the horrors described in The Ellimist Chronicles on Father’s moon. Even among the people who have survived, all is not sunshine and roses. Factions are being created (here’s glaring at you, Yago…), bonds are being forged, lines are drawn, erased, re-drawn, and blurred.

  I do think that these first two books should have been combined, as together they make a much more complete story, where all the set up gets some reward and results to show for the complete destruction of Earth. However, Destination Unknown works better than book #1 as far as being a standalone- we know right away from Billy’s experience basically what has transpired during the journey, and then the Wakers quickly start exploring and trying to determine what to do in this strange new world. We meet some new people, and I’m starting to wonder who all to keep track of as ones who might survive to the end of this series, as the body count just keeps growing, even after the seven billion of Earth. Not to mention, the Wakers run into different…beings, which keep them reeling and guessing just what in the universe is going on in this place where they have landed. They are very much lost pieces on a massive multi-player world map, bumbling around and trying to survive and figure out the game’s rules.

  A solid 3 to 3.5 or so, rounded to a 3.

Quotes and selected commentary:

  Jobs nodded, but he wanted very badly to punch his friend in the face. He didn’t want to be comforted, let alone be told he had to be a good soldier and get on with his life. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to wake up and not be here. It was too much, too much. Impossible to process a tenth of it, a billionth of it.
  His hands were shaking. A result of the hibernation? No. A result of waking up and seeing. – page 25 – (emphasis added) That last line, that hit me in the gut when I read it.

   “What?” 2Face asked. She was still worried about [Jobs]. She didn’t know if he was a strong person who had suffered a moment of weakness, or a weak person. They needed strength. – page 30 – Another line which led me to think Jobs would be the elected “leader”.

  Violet was a freak in the world of school, because to reject a world dominated by soulless technology, a world where no thought ever seemed to go unspoken, where no feeling went unexpressed, a world devoid of politesse, a world without delicacy or tact, to reject that world was seen as unnatural, perhaps even dangerous. When she refused to wear a link even her teachers turned on her, demanding to know how she could stand being so “out of touch.” – page 52-53 – Sounds like the type of person I would be in her same society…goodness knows I’m already on track with it!

  “What’s the game?”
  “Maybe games. Plural.” – page 96 – I cannot help it, this makes me think of the games the Ellimist plays, in The Ellimist Chronicles. Maybe this entire series will be one – or many – huge, horrifying games. Maybe Yago is like a very early, early version of (a new) Crayak?

  Violet Blake said[,] “We don’t have to survive, we have to be worthy of survival. I know you’re a biologist [Ms. Gonzalez] and maybe you see survival in purely evolutionary terms, but we’ve evolved beyond being just another bunch of primates, haven’t we? Isn’t human culture, human mortality part of our evolution? Isn’t it part of what defines us as a species? If we give that up and start behaving like savages and survive by being savages, have we saved human life or just devolved into some lesser species?” – page 104 – Another theme I would be interested to see if it develops or is just left hanging here.

  So Billy reached into [Big Bill’s] brain and found the answer himself.
  […] “Yes,” Big Bill’s brain wanted to say. “Yes, let me die.”
  It was like sucking a milk shake through a straw. Big Bill fought for life though he longed for death. Life and mind were separate, and life fought to persist, no matter how much logic argued for surrender.
  In the end though, Big Bill was too weakened by pain, by loss, and by fear. Billy had been able to give him peace. – page 123 – Now that is a scary prospect, that Billy can do this. Admittedly it seems he does it from an altruistic stance, but if ever he were to take the offensive or become weaponized…that would not be good for any who stood against him or the ones he chose to protect.

[Alex Camden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back to back bangers early on, and continues the pace incredibly well by not giving us space to recuperate alongside the characters.

Even tho we spend more time expanding on the cast of Remnants, it’s not sloggish at all because with their introductions we get even more context of the world that was left behind, and what to expect of the group dynamics as they feel each other out in this new environment.

The deaths feel SO much harder here because this truly does feel like this is the last of humanity, and everyone counts, everyone means something to the hope of survival for the group regardless of how antagonistic or selfish they are.

The reveal of the ship inside of a ship is insane, even knowing it however many years in the future after reading it the first time. Can’t wait for the next one

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I said before, there is a huge change between the first book and this one. While I liked it well enough, I did lose much of my drive to read the rest of the series.

The writing is darker than Animorphs and I feel it's targeting a slightly older audience. It's also really, really weird......sort of like the late 90's and early 2000's. The characters are pretty good for the most part, but Jobs (basically the main character) is a bit too clean and shiny compared to the other characters who all sport their own darker aspects.

More reviews at ReadingOverTheShoulder.com

[Deepak Srinivas · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book that was marketed as the new shiny serialized thing that your kid can pick up at the scholastic book fair and obsess over until the next one comes out, this is incredibly creepy, unrelentingly grim and replete with moments of shocking body horror. A circus of thanatological horrors, a cosmic mockery of human morality, a violent whirlwind of dissassociation as you stand staring at the corpse of humanity itself.

[Issam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy crap, that first chapter! I barely remember these books, but it's incredibly gruesome, and I'm surprised it's labeled as a middle-grade series for 9-12 year olds. I can see inspirations from Stephen King here, and some of the preliminary concepts behind the "Gone" series (written years later by co-author Michael Grant).

Totally hooked on where this goes next.

[Mariah Wamby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second book in Remnants kicks everything in to high gear — it literally starts with a young boy being tortured to insanity by being alive but immobile for 500 years. There’s also a giant eyeless baby that probs shouldn’t exist and flesh eating worms. The sheer chaos of this book really helps you feel the fear that the Remnants do.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

HOW IS THIS A BOOK FOR CHILDREN? I’m a grown adult, and between the description of the bodies whose pods failed (cheese, ewwww), the incredibly creepy baby, and the worms that burrow under your skin, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have nightmares.

This book was terrifying. And yet I must read the next one, if only to understand what in the world is going on.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded down from 3.5.

Very slow; it feels like the sort of thing that could have been dealt with in half the page count or less, and like it should have been part of a larger book.

Credit, though, for having some of the most horrifying imagery I've ever read.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating weirdness to the plot, I love it. Lots of hidden dangers bubbling under the surface unbeknownst to the cast.

It's been a while so I can't really recall anything bad about this book. I was hooked at this point.

Closer to an 8 than a 7.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the first books I remember being severely disturbed by. This might have been as far as I got in the series...

[Arska-täti · Rating 3 out of 5]

80 ihmisestä vain alle puolet herää eloon Mayflowerissa, kun alus on matkannut avaruuden halki 500 vuoden ajan. Matkalaiset heräävät mitä ihmeellisimmässä planeetassa, ja tutkiessaan sitä he huomaavat pian kauhukseen, ettei planeetta olekaan planeetta, ja että sitä asuttavat muutkin olennot.

[Ema]

It's quite amazing how little happened in this book! Really an exposition. I used to think this series should really just be four bigger books.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it's as boring as a first book... 😅

[Kar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Body horror body horror body horror

[Ashton Kraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as great as the first book but still very enjoyable and leaves me eager to read the next one.

[Edward Aminov · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

[Red🏳️‍⚧️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The nightmare continues and it’s a hoot. I just don’t totally follow what’s going on in most of the action sequences, but im enjoying the ride!

[Ashley Zhou · Rating 5 out of 5]

More like what-the-fuck/5

[Blory Blummers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aw heck! This would be a terrible Wednesday

[Thistle · Rating 4 out of 5]

These books are surprisingly short. I keep reaching the end of them way before I expect to. It takes me about four hours to read an average YA book, but these take me about two hours at my normal reading speed.

The book picks up right where the first book ended, but I can't talk about the plot at all without it being spoilery, so I'm going to put it behind the cut. If you intend to read this series, which I recommend you do, don't keep reading:

To review book one: the Earth was destroyed, 80 humans were left "alive" (in hibernation on a space ship), the book ended with the ship flying off from the destroyed planet.

Book two started with them waking up 500 years later. Only about half ever woke up, the rest died along the way from various causes (the grossest among them being something the survivors called "space worms", giant worms that tunneled through the sleeping humans, killing them in their sleep). Somehow the space shuttle landed on what seemed an alien planet... but landed in an upright position, same as how the space shuttle launches. An impossible position for it to have crashed in.

That was only the start of the impossible. The planet around them was a painting. Or half of it was. Left side was a painting, right side was a black and white photo by the famous photographer Ansel Adams. An exact line split the planet between those two sides. The survivors were quite puzzled by that.

They encounter some aliens (probably maybe aliens), more of the "space worms" (UGH horrible and gross), and more (different) aliens. This book ended with the survivors realizing they were actually on an alien ship, not a planet at all, and heading off to try to find the bridge.

---End spoilers--

While I enjoyed this book quite a lot, it had a disturbingly familiar formula to it. It took me a moment to pin down from where, and once I realized it, it made perfect sense: It felt just like the book series her husband writes. Same character types, characters cut off from all other people, falling naturally into two different and opposing groups. It wasn't a bad thing, it just made the story feel less original.

If the whole series wasn't published already, I'd be annoyed because each of these books thus far feels more like a chapter in the story instead of a stand-alone book.

[Julie Decker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The human crew of the Mayflower awakens and finds that hundreds of years have passed--far more than the intended amount of cryogenic sleep they were supposed to endure. In their previous adventure escaping from an asteroid-smashed Earth, they locked eighty people into sleep pods, but a scuffle at the end meant not everyone made it alive (and some who weren't meant to be preserved got preserved, like Tamara). Many of the crew had perished due to radiation and weird worm-shaped holes through things. But some have awakened to explore their new surroundings. Tamara, a woman who was a guard and originally hadn't been planning to be saved on the ship, was pregnant, and her baby was born while she slumbered. But it was warped by some mysterious influence and appears to be mentally controlling its mother, and also Billy--who was always pretty weird--is now catatonic, having been improperly set into sleep and having been basically awake for half a millennium. The crew have landed in a surreal place that they can't determine the nature of--and they're finding disturbing Earth references--and they face more horrors and injuries and alien illnesses in their first venture out. The president's genetically enhanced son, Yago, appears to be making grabs for power already, and Jobs and Mo'Steel aren't sure what their position in this pecking order is. In a harsh alien world, it's a bit ironic that what threatens these newly awakened passengers the most is each other. . . .

Human nature is again spun perfectly by Ms. Applegate; the hostile nature of the people and the way they attack each other and try to form alliances is just so perfectly human that it's frightening. The extremely creepy Baby storyline and Billy's perpetual daze are really freaky too, to say nothing of the horrible worm infestation some people get in their bodies. I love that this book deals with the horror of the unknown while expertly displaying the familiar, and it's already planting an alien creepiness that seemed ripe to carry us through another fantastic series.

[N.T. Embeast · Rating 5 out of 5]

I. Need. The. Next. Book. Right. Now.

I just finished this one and I'm like HNNNNG GIVE ME MOOOOORE! *Claws at empty space, wishing the book would appear* I think I'm suffering from withdrawal! DX How am I going to survive the wait until I can go back to the library and check out the rest of the series!!! ARGH. I need to read more! There's so much crazy stuff going on here! I have to read the rest! THINGS ARE CONSTANTLY INTERESTING AND CRAZY AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON BUT IT'S ALL SO GOOD THAT I CAN'T STOP READING. If I had the entire series I wouldn't stop reading! *SOBS* Why didn't they have the third one in the library when I went? DX My agony!

Seriously dudes and dudettes. This. Series. Is. AMAZING!

YOU PEOPLE NEED TO READ IT. If you have ANY sort of interest in science fiction, you HAVE to read this series. YOU HAVE TO. It's so good! It's filled with the most disgusting and freaky and horrifying and amazing stuff! And every single time you think you know what's going on you have ten new mysteries that smack into your face, and all these weird and unexplainable things going on that are effects of who knows what yet! And it's CRAZY AMAZING!!!! *Flails!*

Seriously. Read. These. Books. Go pick up the first one and read it. It's called "The Mayflower Project" by Katherine Applegate. GO. GET IT.

And if you have any doubts about the rest of the series...

DON'T STOP NOW. READ THIS ONE TOO. OH MY GOD IT'S SO GOOD. CHARGE FORWARD, COMRADES! READ THIS!!!

Man, I wish I had the third book on hand right now. Try to take out a ton of the series when you do pick it up. XD Take my advice. You'll want to keep up with this fast-paced and intense series!