Book Review
Title: The Invasion (Grey Land #2)
Author: Peadar Ó Guilín
Genre: YA/Horror/Fantasy
Rating: *
Review: After recently reading The Call I was eager to get into The Invasion as soon as possible especially after the explosion ending of the first book, I was also eager to revisit the romance between Nessa and Anto. This book start almost immediately when the first one ended and Nessa is on her way to stay with Anto and his family when she is arrested for treason as no one believes that someone like Nessa who has a disability could truly survive the Call and she is thrown into the last prison in the Nation which sends traitors into the mist and we know from the first book that anything that goes into the mist never returns. Anto is also collected being told that they have a mission for him and that Nessa has already gone on her own mission. Meanwhile, the warden of the prison tries to convince Nessa to tell the truth but we already know she is but they refuses to believe her especially since their world and the Grey Lands are closer than ever with Sidhe crossing more frequently into their world. Nessa does manage to learn that another prisoner confessed to the warden that they are people who had made deals with the Sidhe in order to return alive, many of which we saw in the first book and these survivors are being branded as traitors but I believe if they rounded those people up there would actually be very few survivors.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we bounce around between Nessa, Anto and other people for what is happening in Ireland. With Nessa she learns that the prison is also home to a Sidhe who is able to age and hasn’t shrunken like the other she witnessed. A group of the prisoners are tested before being presented to the Sidhe and only two make it Angela and Nessa. Even though the Sidhe can’t see or hear them it is able to sense them and it calls Angela rare because she is essentially invisible to the Sidhe and has never been called even at 25 and she wishes to return alive from the Grey Lands. Nessa tries to prevent this and the Sidhe seems to know she broken the promise she made to them and shouldn’t be alive right now. Afterwards Nessa explains to Angela she was too vague with her wish and while she might return from the Grey Lands, she almost certainly be the same and advises her to run and if she can’t threaten to kill herself which would break the promise which the Sidhe fears more than playing with her and shortly after she is Called. Anto has been drafted to be a soldier but his pacifist nature makes him a sitting duck. The group he has been assigned to normally track and kill mutated animals but Anto can’t even do that when all available units are being sent back close to the school and he seems to know that something has happened to Nessa especially after a traitor girl is mentioned and he is determined to run from the soldiers and find Nessa. Meanwhile, at the school Sidhe appears are becoming more common until a trio of them turn up and offer a deal. They explains that the barrier between their worlds is falling and soon the Sidhe will take over Ireland once more but those who enter the Grey Lands willingly won’t be harmed but Taaft rejects the deal before Aoife can say anything else and everything erupts into chaos.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Anto is on the move with the soldiers heading close to the school when a massive creature erupts from the hillside near to the bus with a Sidhe nearby. The soldiers try to fight the creature but it manages to wipe a huge portion on them out and with the Sidhe riding the giant they can’t get a clear shot at him until someone hands Anto a grenade and tells him to aim for the legs but Anto unnatural strength in the one arm allows him to throw the grenade further and he manages to hit the Sidhe controlling the creatures effectively saving everyone and he is accepted into the team properly. Despite knowing he is close to the school and could escape Anto doesn’t because he is injured but he is still determined to track down Nessa while he can. We also get to see Angela’s Call and the Sidhe treat her differently to every other Call we have seen in the previous book which is strange but she doesn’t return after the three minutes. Due to this Nessa is taken for questioning where she is effectively tortured having her fingers broken one by one until she gives up the name of her Sidhe contact but she doesn’t have anything to tell and she won’t incriminate an innocent person and it is only here that they realises that she could be innocent as that is the only explanation and her release is ordered but the Professor is interested in her and they want to keep her around. So far, I wasn’t enjoying The Invasion as much as The Call for a few reasons. The time we are bouncing around a lot more and not just to see the Calls neither Anto or Nessa’s storyline seems to be going anywhere despite the incredibly quick pacing of the novel but as it is relatively short, I will power through and hope it gets better.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, everything gets very confused and muddled because we are switching so often and so much is happening at once so we don’t really get a chance to process it before we move on. On the one hand, we see Nessa being experimented on to figure out why she was unchanged by the Sidhe and the extent of her ability which often involves some form of torture from the professor or the guards. However, Angela returns from her Call well past the three minute mark and a tons of Sidhe follow her back and break into the prison with the aim of collecting Nessa although no one knows why. In the battle that follows, Nessa is confused as one Sidhe tells Nessa that they aren’t there to hurt her and even protects her from being shot but another deliberately injured her already broken fingers almost like the Sidhe aren’t agreed on whether Nessa should be killed or saved. This doesn’t work in her favour as the professor steals her away to perform more tests when agents come from Nessa. While many want Nessa released because she is innocent, she ends up being put on a boat and delivered back to the Grey Lands. Nessa refuses to return there and capsizes her boat and plunges into the water but it seems reality itself is bending all around her. During this time Angela is affected as well because as soon as she returns, she begins shrinking like a Sidhe does and she doesn’t know why as the Sidhe led her out of the Grey Lands. Meanwhile, Anto has learned of Nessa imprisonment and races to the school where he arrives just in time to help them fend off an attack from the Sidhe but he learns that Nessa has been sent onto the boats and his first thought is getting back to the Grey Lands and saving her but this would be impossible.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, Nessa finds that her ability is developing and evolving but it doesn’t save her from the Sidhe that are set on capturing her under the water. However, she manages to avoid them but when she is cornered, she claims that she has been marked by Dagda himself and she must go to him unchanged and the Sidhe accept this because she has promised to go to Dagda. The Sidhe takes her into the Grey Lands once more and they are even friendly as they take her to get some crutches but she turns on them killing one and fleeing from the rest heading towards the volcano in the hopes of finding the Cauldron. However, she is spotted and picked up by another Sidhe but she fights this one too and we leave her as she is plummeting towards the ground. Back with Anto and the others they have managed to find a temporary shelter but it doesn’t last long as the Sidhe are flooding into their world and turning anyone, they find into monsters and setting them loose upon any others. As the group begin making a run for it, Aoife is Called which poses a problem as monsters are swarming the area and they may have to leave her behind even if she does survive. In all this time Nessa has never left Anto’s mind but he is beginning to question whether or not she is dead and focuses on his own survival right now. Honestly, we are over halfway through the novel and the pacing and constant jumping is giving me whiplash but I am hopeful that everything will come together especially with Nessa in the Grey Lands killing any Sidhe she comes across.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, we are getting far more sense out of focusing on the real world with Anto and the other survivors. The remaining humans are fighting back against the Sidhe but the more and more monsters being created they are fighting a losing battle especially since they can’t identify the traitors as they look like them. This very thing leads to the death of Nabil and Anto finally makes the decision to sleep with Liz as he is sure that Nessa has betrayed them and is never coming back to him. However, in the Grey Lands, Nessa is murdering Sidhe left and right but it doesn’t seem to be making a difference as she can’t get any further away from the volcano and this is because she is bound by her promise to see Dagda and the Grey Lands won’t let her leave until she does. By the time she gives in and heads up the volcano she comes into contact with more traitors because Dagda has sensed her arrival but she looks more like one of the Sidhe than ever right now. Honestly, I don’t have much hope of this coming together unless Nessa does something drastic but it might not change the state of things much especially her relationship with Anto as that would require some major work for him to forgive her for the deal, she took from the Sidhe.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, we get to witness the final stages of the invasion and the final showdown between Nessa and Dagda which was interesting but what happened after was a complete mess. We had Sidhe fighting humans while Nessa fought Dagda and she was fighting a losing battle until she realises that the humans in the Grey Lands where a way of shutting the doors between worlds but there aren’t enough of them to stop the invasion but then Nessa suddenly realises something which she doesn’t tell us about and she manages to kill Dagda which causes the world to separate and just before they do Anto leaps into the Grey Lands where Nessa is. We then jump forward into the future where Ireland has been restored and can be accessed by the rest of the world as Aoife tells her granddaughter about the Sidhe and the girl tells Aoife that some of her friends have been to the Grey Lands but they aren’t a place of horror now as a boy with a big arm leads them home and she knows this is Anto but it was never revealed that Nessa saved them all. The Invasion had so much potential that was wasted especially for the character development of Ness and Anto and the ending was flat as it would have been more interesting for a changed Nessa to return to her world and be threatened with death but her story is confirmed as true as the mist lifts and Scotland can be seen for the first time in decades and have her lorded as a hero while she repairs her relationship with Anto and they finally get the happily ever after they deserve. I would still recommend the first book but I would tell people to ignore the sequel altogether.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: The Call
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