Darwin II

This book has one of the most boring blurbs ever. I almost didn't pick it up because of that.

So let's try to write a more interesting summary for this book than the ‘aliens invaded Earth, Earth lost the fight, and have to do the bidding of the alien race, while a group of humans opposes and fights back'.

Exo is a book about a higher form of intelligence finding out that there was life on Earth. So they tried to assimilate Earth into their council of intelligent beings. But in their initial arrival, they lacked the proper data to communicate with humans in our language and needed time to process our language systems. They arrived on Earth without any warning and landed their spaceships in the middle/on-top of human settlements (as they did not look for free parking spots), and ended up murdering a large group of humans in the process of landing (and they're supposed to be intelligent beings - this is the dumbest thing to do when you go to another planet).

Now Earth just wasn't having it and retaliated back. But the beings were intelligent, and hardened physically, as in they wore exoskeleton suits of armor, because of which they ended up defeating the human race and forced them to become a part of their system - as a lesser species.

They also went on to share their technology and exo's with humans (or rather forced it upon the population), but in a very limited way s.t. only 15% of the population is marked (alien terminology for ‘we recognize you as a part of us') , and the rest live without any privileges.

So now you have two groups of humans - one who work with the alien race (Zhree), and the second (a group called Sapience) who consider the Zhree and the humans who work with them - a threat. This is the major conflict in the book.

Without giving away any spoilers, the book is about Donovan Reyes - whose father is the prime liaison between humans and the Zhree. We get to see the story through his eyes. How it is to live as a soldier working for the Zhree, how other humans see you as less human and more enemy. And how, when you experience the conflict through the eyes of both the sides, it is hard to decide which side is right or wrong. How you can stand with someone on point and apart from them on another.

This book was very well written. It discusses many war issues with a lot of emotions. How there is no right or wrong side sometimes. It just depends on where you stand.

Things I liked:
- Exocel descriptions
- The way the Zhree communicated
- The amount of emotions Donovan showed (while making the correct decisions and not being an emotional fool)

Things that were nope, nope:
- Manipulative parents?! (little bit)
- The hardening process (big nope)
- How emotionally distant Jet was during the whole atomizer crap.
- Freaking Kevin -_-

Overall: This book was easy and engaging enough to read, and I'm looking forward to reading book 2.