LITERALLY TWENTY MONTHS LATER and I am finally on the last part of this book. I appreciate anyone who is still around to see the end of this thing, or who found it again, or who are going to show up twenty months from now and go ‘omg she actually finished it?’

While waiting for go time, Fi and Ellie sit around and talk about boys. That is, quite possibly, the most believable part of this whole book. Ellie waxes philosophical for a while about how both Fi and Homer are so much different than she thought they were before this whole ordeal.

‘Yes,’ said Fi, ‘but I don’t think he wants to have much to do with them any more. He’s changed so much, don’t you think?’

…no? Because I didn’t get to see much of him before everything started? We get flashbacks that say he was a goofball class clown type who was really physically active, and that hasn’t changed? He just got to apply his already-existing intelligence to an extreme situation?

This feels like such a cheat, like the book is going HEY HEY GUYS I HAVE CHARACTER ARCS I SWEAR LOOK SEE EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT CHANGE AND STUFF and really you do not need a whole page of people pointing out character changes if you’ve actually written an arc well.

Also, pretty sure Homer is officially the protagonist of this book.

‘I want to learn all I can about farming,’ Fi said, ‘so when we’re married I can help him heaps and heaps.’

Oh my God! I thought. You know they’re beyond help when they talk like that.

Or they’re just teenagers. I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s not like they can actually follow through on any impulsive decisions along that track right now.

Ellie continues to info dump to us about her ever-shifting feelings towards Homer, throwing out entirely new nuances that we haven’t gotten to see in their interactions, because their interactions are “Let’s blow stuff up.” “Okay.” *insert summary about plans*

After a long, long wait, the plan finally gets underway when the boys start the stampede towards the bridge. Ellie and Fi rush to get the truck into place, and then run to cover, trailing a petrol-soaked rope behind them to be the fuse. Well. It’s better than a random trail like with the lawn mower, but it’s still not going to explode.

There are sounds the throat produces which may not be in English, but which have an unmistakable meaning. When I was little I’d had a dog called Rufus, who was a border-collie springer-spaniel cross. He was just a natural rabbiter, and I used to take him out most afternoons for the joy of seeing him at full stretch after a fleeing rabbit. Whenever he was in hot pursuit he uttered a peculiar high-pitched yelp, that he never used at any other time. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, when I heard that sound I knew Rufus was chasing a rabbit.

The shout from the bridge, although not in my language, was unmistakable too.

Uh…cool story, bro?

Still confused by this book’s insistence on random long backstory to explain thoroughly normal thought processes and actions. “I recognize the sounds these people are making as sound the alarm” doesn’t really needed a justification. And if it’s just a style choice, okay, but Ellie is running for her life across open ground and she’s just been spotted, and you want to sidetrack for a relatively long paragraph to talk about dogs? Am I supposed to feel tension after that? I don’t.

But yeah, Ellie got spotted and…waxes philosophical for more paragraphs while getting shot at, before finally making it to hiding. They light the fuse and run away and I just realized that the second to last chapter is just exactly the plan from the third to last chapter going off without a hitch.

We just read the same plan twice in two chapters.

“We’re going to do A.” *A happens.*

If that’s the case, we don’t need the plan. The only reason to lay out the plan in such exacting detail is if we’re going to deviate from it later because of a problem.

The girls get away, and later they meet up with Homer and Lee and…talk about the plan that they’ve already talked about and executed.

This is it. This is our denouement, people. Instead of seeing the results of their destruction or getting any new information or dealing with any kind of fallout we get…the same thing we got in the middle of the book. Kids talking about stuff that already happened that we don’t get to see.

They turned around and went belting off the bridge. They were just in time. You’ll be glad to know,’ he said, looking at me, ‘that I don’t think any of them were hurt.’

Look, you can set the bridge on fire (as would make perfect sense) and let all the soldiers live, or you can have a huge explosion that feels like an earthquake and all the nearby soldiers die. That’s it. Those are you two options here. Explosions have a kill radius inside of which just being there will cause injury, whether or not you’re hit by shrapnel. And, granted, I don’t know the kill radius of a magical-exploding-tanker-that-shouldn’t, but that still leaves all the shrapnel from the TANKER AND BRIDGE THAT EXPLODED.

If I knowingly did things like blowing up bridges, then the fact that by sheer good luck no one was hurt didn’t let me off the hook. Once I’d made my decision to go with the tanker I’d been ready to live with the consequences, whatever they were.

Oh, sweet, a good line. Have those been getting less frequent, or have I just been crankier? Honestly hard to tell, so I’m just going to assume the cranky option.

The kids nap all day, because that’s what I want 5 pages from the end of an action book, and then ride their stolen motorbikes back to Ellie’s house.

But one they get there and find the other four, they find out Corrie’s been shot.

I mean, on the one hand I get the shock value of this coming on the heels of a successful mission. It is a good contrast. It would be a better contrast if my feels about the mission weren’t “omg when will they stop talking and just show us stuff” and now here’s yet another thing that’s happened off-page.

Ellie is distraught, because If Homer was my brother, Corrie was my sister. Which is, of course, why she’s been off-page for the majority of the book.

They discuss how to get her to the hospital, since that’s still running even though going means getting taken prisoner. Kevin decides he’s going to drive her there in one of their extra cars and give himself up in the process, if it means getting her medical help.

And that’s it. That’s the end.

The Corrie thing, like I said, is a good contrast….or would have been if it could be the whole last chapter, and not three pages of the last chapter. It is amazing how little emotion is given to this, which is supposed to be the last heavy beat of the novel, the thing to cause emotional whiplash and bring you in for the next in the series. Instead it’s almost an afterthought.

We only find out who shot her in a single line in the epilogue, amongst more philosophizing about the nature of stories and how they’re all settled in for the long haul fight. It’s all so abrupt.

So I guess I will be, too. The end.