Two young guitarists love jamming with each other when one meets a talented young woman who wants to make them into a band. She has found a vocalist while one of the young men is seeking a drummer.
The band is organized. Pearl is on keyboard, Moz as lead guitar, Zahler on base (a switch from the guitar he played previously), Alana Ray on drums, Minerva as singer, and they are making strange new music. Pearl has managed to find a pending deal with a record company. Since Minerva is a vampire, she has managed to infect Moz.
A mysterious epidemic is emerging in the city. Can these musicians save the city from what is happening or will their music bring it to a climax? The setting began in Peeps and continues in The Last Days.
Reviewed by Long Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com
Set against the apocalyptic foreground first seen in PEEPS, THE LAST DAYS is a sequel to the former, and definitely does not disappoint.
Scott Westerfeld is one of the most consistently solid young adult novelists today and his latest only keeps the bar high and the readers happy. The Texas native is widely known for his innovative interpretations of "fantasy-esque" worlds and is the highly acclaimed author of THE MIDNIGHTERS and UGLIES trilogies.
THE LAST DAYS is a story based in contemporary New York City with a splash of dystopia tasting. Westerfeld takes on the always fun topic of vampires, and, as seen in PEEPS, revamping the whole legend behind the blood-thirsty immortals into his own super interesting view, basing the theory around "vampireism" as a disease similar, if not identical, to the Black Plague that ravaged the globe centuries before. Westerfeld delves more into a biological explanation, which involves carriers, kissing and biting, and a whole lot of rats.
It's summer, and New York City is going crazy. The temperature is much more intense than usual, even for summer; the sanitation is no longer under control (rats!); people are disappearing, afraid to travel on the subways; and Moz and Zahler are a two-man, kind of half-band. But soon their luck will change when they meet Pearl, a Juilliard music student, and her newly turned carrier friend Minerva. The four of them, along with street drummer Alana Ray, whose mental condition allows her to view farther into the depths than is advisable, join together to write music so epic, even they do not understand the magnitude of what is going to happen. Things are changing faster than you think.
So sit back, relax, and get ready to read these five teenager's soundtrack to the end of the world. It's going to be a good one. Masterfully written, old Westerfeld fans as well as new ones are sure to be blown away by the sheer raw sonic power of THE LAST DAYS.
Scott Westerfeld is arguably the master of modern-day sci-fi. His books, whether they are set in this present world, or in a future place, are always easy to relate to and understand. Even readers who have not read PEEPS (and you should) will enjoy this one.
THE LAST DAYS is essentially a story about five wannabe musicians getting together to form a band. There's Pearl: musically talented, smart, rich, an entrepreneur, and a little bossy on the keyboard. There's Moz, the talented but untrained guitarist who along with Pearl saves a rare Stratocaster guitar that a crazy woman was chucking out of her apartment window. Zahler is Moz's best friend, guitarist turned bassist, who constantly feels as if he's the band's weak link and has a penchant for making up new words (fawesome!).
The threesome hire Alana Ray, a talented but neurotically challenged drummer who drums on paint buckets and can see what music looks like. And finally there's Minerva, Pearl's friend who was bitten by something and now exhibits vampirish and vaguely cannibalistic tendencies--but whose singing talent somehow connects the whole band together into something paranormal.
When the band rehearses, strange things happen. The ground beneath them rumbles, as if something is struggling to reach them from underground. Meanwhile, the infected Minerva develops a relationship with Moz, as the parasite inside of her tries to spread itself by making her horny and irresistible.
In their journey to find an agent and get signed up to a label, the still nameless band learn that there is something very powerful about their music, as it has a way of summoning up the human race's greatest enemy from deep within the earth where they reside. Now, the five young men and women must use their musical and supernatural talents to help the peeps, infected humans who can control their vampirish tendencies and who were created to help save humanity. Together, they will summon and fight the enemies until nearly all are extinct. Until next time.
The world that Scott Westerfeld has created is creepily realistic. I got chills from reading this novel, and anything that moves me to such a reaction is extraordinary.
