Review: Earthfall by Mark Walden

The battle for mankind is about to begin in this riveting story of Earth’s invasion from the author of the H.I.V.E. series.

Sam awakens to see strange vessels gathered in the skies around London. As he stares up, people stream past, walking silently toward the enormous ships, which emit a persistent noise. Only Sam seems immune to the signal. Six months later, he is absolutely alone.

Or so he thinks. Because after he emerges from his underground bunker and is wounded by a flying drone, a hail of machine-gun fire ultimately reveals two very important truths: One, Sam is not, in fact, alone. And two, the drone injury should have killed him—but it didn’t.

With his home planet feeling alien and the future unstable and unclear, Sam must navigate a new world in this gripping adventure.

Review

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for providing the ARC.

It has been a while since I’ve read a middle grade book let along an amazing one. I was kind of worried because I thought MG was not for me anymore, because the past few MG titles I read just didn’t amaze me. So I am so glad that this title worked for me.

I have to say at first I wasn’t that into the book (but I was having a book hangover). So after I read the first chapter I’m like “oh no, that’s A LOT of description”. I knew that Mark just wanted to establish the background and the setting but it was just almost pure description. But after that one (almost dreadful) chapter, the book was fast-paced, interesting, and enjoyable.

There’s only one way I can describe the book and it is…..if you like the feel of Call of Duty, this book is a winner for you. And oh look Mark spend 10 years as a video games designer and producer! :O I legitimately didn’t know that fact but now I can totally understand why the book was like a video game. I really felt that I was an avatar in a game, running through the dead, dark streets, all dirty, hungry and scared. 

But I have to say there was almost no suspense in the first part of the book because there was a time jump back in time. It talked about how the aliens attacked and it was just typical stuff: “Aliens suddenly appeared. Sam was the only unaffected by hypnotism. Blah blah blah.”

There wasn’t a lot of character development because of the time jumps. “The next couple of months seemed to pass by in a blur for Sam.” (101) I guess Mark didn’t want to spend a shit load of blah blah like most apocalyptic stories on the training. Which was fine, and I actually liked that but we did lose the transition and the growth of the characters.

Without character development, the characters were not really memorable. Sure I liked them but they didn’t stick in my mind. The interactions between characters were fun though, they joke, they laugh, they fight. I think it was pretty awesome. I liked how Sam was a newbie but he was a leader. And what was more was that he wasn’t the type of leader that whined and complained about “I don’t want to be the leader”. He just simply lead the team.

I think one of the biggest reasons I loved this book was that there was no deep thinking shit, no angst, no “boohoo I’m stuck in this horrible place and I must be tough”. All there were actions and doings. This made this book super fast to read; before I knew it I was half way through! So like a video game, this book was very addicting to me. I just wanted to follow the characters and complete tasks, and fight aliens! If you want the rush of video games, read this book!


Final thought? Though this book was not on the level of “Percy Jackson”, but it was definitely a must read! Definitely can’t wait for the next book!