Zero Repeat Forever

July 15, 2017
A group of teens resists a worldwide alien invasion. In a familiar premise, the kids, stranded in an Alberta wilderness camp, know very little of the Nahx attack and are forced to strategize on their own. When they decide to seek a safer refuge, the Nahx begin to pick them off one by one. They barely make it to a larger military stronghold when co-narrator Raven discovers that one Nahx is following her. In alternating chapters, readers learn that this Nahx, called Eighth, has gone AWOL. In his self-flagellating counternarration, Eighth reveals his defective feelings of guilt for killing humans and his strangely protective attitude toward Raven. Their paths cross again when Eighth saves her life. Stowed away in an abandoned apartment building, Eighth and Raven are forced to reckon with the fact that Nahx and humans are enemies. Or are they? The slow-moving adventure unfolds over nearly 500 pages divided into subsections denoting the seasons, with epigraphs from Poe. Raven is a mixed-race (black/white) teen with a volatile, troubled past, a one-note anger-management poster child. Eighth seems to be fascinated with Raven's Afro, a trait typically more common to white humans than aliens. An interesting final reveal sets up the sequel; readers who get there will hope Book 2 gets to the quick of what might well be a potentially interesting love story. (Science fiction. 14-18)

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October 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Teens will love the pace and dialogue of this sci-fi novel about an alien invasion, told alternately from the human and alien perspectives. Raven, 16, is doing community service at a wilderness summer camp with Tucker and Topher, twins. This is the only reason they live through the start of the invasion by the Nahx. "Our own stars betray us," Raven thinks as she watches the meteor shower and jets race across the sky and try to stop the invasion. Readers meet Eighth before they meet Raven and know only that his mind is a void, but he remembers his directive, piece by piece: dart the humans. Leave them where they fall. Thus begins the fall of humans on planet Earth. Raven and the counselors at camp are able to survive because the kids haven't arrived and all of the food was delivered early. There are guns for protection against wild animals. There is shelter. There is hope. Eighth's mind seems to collapse on itself as readers follow him through his directive and his refusal to obey it. As Raven and Eighth find themselves on an intersecting path, readers will be sucked into humanity's struggle to survive and the Nahx's all too focused efforts to ensure that it doesn't. VERDICT A first purchase for teen collections.-Cathleen Ash, Manor High School Library, TX

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