It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Pete Hautman’s Klaatu Diskos‘ trilogy. The final book, the Klaatu Terminus, was released a few weeks ago, and I’m happy to say I enjoyed it just as much as the other two.

Part of the reason I love this trilogy so much is that it’s weird. But its weirdness has a purpose. I think the best explanation I can give for it is this: It’s like the television show Lost, where a series of bizarre and inexplicable things keep happening, except that unlike Lost, things actually do get explained and resolved in the end. All the weird, bizarre things that happened coalesce into something that makes you go “Oh! I get it all now! How cool!” (It is super cool.) Everything comes together. And then it makes you want to go back and re-read all of the books so you can pick up on every little thing and make your mental picture even more complete.

It seems like Hautman had a plan for the plot from the beginning, which I appreciate. (Or if he didn’t have a plan, he found a way to make it work anyhow. I’m not sure which is more impressive.) I talk a lot about the crazy plot in this series, but I don’t want it to overshadow the excellent characterization or writing or any of that other good stuff. (I feel like I have to mention that because a lot of SFF gets unjustly painted as big on plot, little on “substance.”)

The Klaatu Terminus focuses mainly on Kosh, telling the story from his point of view. We get a lot of flashbacks to when Kosh was a seventeen year old in the 90s, falling in love with his older brother’s fiancee. Normally I dislike flashbacks, but these were integral to the plot (not merely character-building exercises), and Hautman writes them so well. Plus, Kosh (born with the name Curtis) mentions casually that he took the name Kosh from a currently-airing tv show and I about died. (The tv show can only be Babylon 5, for which I hold a possibly unreasonable amount of love.) I guess you could say I’m a cheap date for this kind of book.

While a lot of the story takes place in the 90s, we also get some present-day stuff too. Or rather, we get some stuff from when Kosh is an adult and Lia and Tucker are teenagers. They spend time in 2012, but they also spend a lot of time in the future…and the far future. Tucker and Lia travel through time intentionally in this book, as opposed to the accidental jumps of the previous volumes. They’re trying to piece together everything they’ve encountered – the Boggsians, the Lambs of September, the timesweeps, the klaatu, the diskos themselves – while also evading people who are out to kill them (naturally). It’s all delightfully bizarre and it all makes wonderful, wonderful sense at the end.

I don’t think I can emphasize enough how satisfying this conclusion is; readers who have invested their time in the first two books won’t be disappointed. The trilogy as a whole is terrific for teens who love a good sci fi adventure, and I’d absolutely hand it to teens who love reading about time travel and the various paradoxes such a thing may create. It’s unlike anything I’ve read, really, so hand this series to readers who crave something new and different and strange.

Final copy checked out from my local library.