You may recall that I really enjoyed Lissa Price’s debut Starters. It’s a fast-paced, well-plotted, and exciting futuristic story that takes a lot of liberties with science, but is fun nonetheless. I looked forward to reading its sequel (it’s a duology, so this book is the final in the series), Enders, for quite some time.

Alas, Enders is a mess. While it thankfully addresses the fact that all people over 60 in this world where people live to be 200+ are not, in fact, called enders (some of them are called middles), that’s about the only satisfying aspect I found.

The plot involves Callie trying to rescue a number of other teens who were at the body bank and have chips implanted in their heads. The Old Man has found a way to control these teens (called Metals) via the chips – he can actually speak to Callie in her mind by using her chip as well as control her body movements at times. Callie isn’t sure what the Old Man’s end game is, but she’s found an ally in his son, Hyden (no, not Hayden. Hyden, and yes, he does seem to just appear out of nowhere), plus her friend Michael.

The main issue is that Enders just doesn’t seem to know what exactly it should be doing. Where Starters was tightly-plotted, Enders just meanders. Action isn’t driven by character or plot. The characters themselves seem to just sort of wander around too, until they finally all come together in a skeezy climax that is only mildly interesting. It also involves two major pieces of wish-fulfillment that are difficult to believe.

Readers of Starters will recall that the Old Man was a creepy, deliciously villainous bad guy. Without spoiling anything, I can say that the way his character is developed in Enders feels like a giant cheat – like Price was trying to have her cake and eat it too. As a result, there is a huge disconnect between his character in the first book and his character in the second book. They may as well be different people. It feels a bit like a retcon of the first book, actually.

Furthermore, I was never quite sure what Callie and her group of Metals
intended to do once they all got together, and I don’t think Callie knew
either. Motivations are so murky, the character of Hyden is so forced (and contradictory),
and other ancillary characters are so underdeveloped as to be forgotten. (What was Michael doing the duration of the story? I couldn’t even recall most of the time whether he was with Callie or away babysitting Tyler.) The difference between Starters and Enders is like night and day.

Diehard fans of the first book will want to pick this up, but otherwise, you can give it a miss.

(I don’t often disagree this strongly with major review publications. I suppose you may like to know that both Booklist and Kirkus gave this book fairly positive reviews. This mainly just makes me think “Huh.” To each their own.)

Review copy provided by the publisher. Enders is available now.