Promises Stronger Than Darkness marks the final installment of the international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders's absolutely heart-stopping YA series, Unstoppable.
They're the galaxy's most wanted—and our only hope.**
When Elza became a space princess, she thought she'd be spending her time at the palace, wearing gorgeous couture and soaking up everything there is to know—but instead, she's on the run, with everyone hunting for her and her friends.
Rachael followed her best friend Tina on the adventure of a lifetime—but now Tina's gone, and Rachael's the only one keeping her friends together, as they go on a desperate quest to save everyone from an ancient curse.
Rachael, Elza and their friends have found one clue, one shining mysterious chance to stop the end of the world. And that takes them back to the second-to-last place they'd want to be: enlisting the aid of Captain Thaoh Argentian, the woman …
Promises Stronger Than Darkness marks the final installment of the international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders's absolutely heart-stopping YA series, Unstoppable.
They're the galaxy's most wanted—and our only hope.**
When Elza became a space princess, she thought she'd be spending her time at the palace, wearing gorgeous couture and soaking up everything there is to know—but instead, she's on the run, with everyone hunting for her and her friends.
Rachael followed her best friend Tina on the adventure of a lifetime—but now Tina's gone, and Rachael's the only one keeping her friends together, as they go on a desperate quest to save everyone from an ancient curse.
Rachael, Elza and their friends have found one clue, one shining mysterious chance to stop the end of the world. And that takes them back to the second-to-last place they'd want to be: enlisting the aid of Captain Thaoh Argentian, the woman who stole Tina's body (and who now seems to be relishing a second chance at teenage chaos and drama, instead of living up to her legacy of an intrepid heroic commander).
With only a ragtag band of misfits, crewmates, earthlings, friends, lovers (and one annoying frenemy), the Unstoppable Crew are up against the universe--and they soon find that in order to survive, they may have to cross a line they vowed never to cross.
I expected to be lost—it’s been a while since I read the prior two books—but nope! And we get to spend more time with the Grattna, a species whose bodies, language, and worldview is based on threes, not binaries. Fascinating!
Overall, the series has too many species, cultures, etc. to fully track, but the way they solve problems and work through their shit is how more people should be in the universe.
This is the final book in Charlie Jane Anders' Unstoppable trilogy. There's heists, swamp planets, space battles, trauma, processing, and so many feelings. It's got a satisfying payoff, expected-but-still-awful escalated stakes from previous books, and a lot of character growth packed into an action-filled book. I have read a bunch of her previous novels and I think these are my favorite.
To get back at what I mentioned earlier about violence, I think this book ends up with a more nuanced view than I was expecting. (Also, a surprising [quantity, not existence given the subject matter] of trauma for a YA book). This book says "It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re hurting people for the ‘greater good’—and that can mean anything you want it to mean" and also says "Killing is the clumsiest, cruelest solution to any problem". There's definitely trolley problems and Stanislav Petrov-esque issues that the characters …
This is the final book in Charlie Jane Anders' Unstoppable trilogy. There's heists, swamp planets, space battles, trauma, processing, and so many feelings. It's got a satisfying payoff, expected-but-still-awful escalated stakes from previous books, and a lot of character growth packed into an action-filled book. I have read a bunch of her previous novels and I think these are my favorite.
To get back at what I mentioned earlier about violence, I think this book ends up with a more nuanced view than I was expecting. (Also, a surprising [quantity, not existence given the subject matter] of trauma for a YA book). This book says "It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re hurting people for the ‘greater good’—and that can mean anything you want it to mean" and also says "Killing is the clumsiest, cruelest solution to any problem". There's definitely trolley problems and Stanislav Petrov-esque issues that the characters have to face. If I had to sum it up, I think this series is trying to say that often there are (usually, but not always) other options that are effective if you're willing to be creative, and that violence is often a lazy option (that will cost others but also you).
One other interesting side set of ideas this book gets into a bunch is how the universal translator gets in the way (and makes incorrect assumptions) as much as it helps. I was wondering when this series would get to it, because the first book dropped some hints that not everything was quite right but also because I had previously read Charlie Jane Ander's blog post about universal translators. It's certainly still a magical device in this universe, conveniently and telepathically(?) detecting which pronouns you want other people to use. However, it's still a question of "who has made this device (and who have they considered when making it)" as well as how do you even translate things properly between species who have very different ways of looking at the world (as if this already isn't an impossible problem between two existing human languages)? It's certainly something I think about a lot in an age of seeing many people's writing mediated through lossy google translate.
Finally some random smaller bits that I enjoyed a lot that I just want to mention:
* enemy spaceship named Friendly Advice
* polyam jealousy somehow at the root of evil both great and small
* friendships as important as relationships, explicitly several times both told and shown
* everybody literally holds hands during the final confrontation
