Starry Blue Apocolypse

Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert
Just had to put that out there 'cause I'm pretty sure the spoilers will be coming fast and fierce with this rambling of And All the Stars by Andrea Host.  I actually decided to do something different and try and write down all my reactions to the book, so here they are in the order that they were written.
Starry blue apocalypse (what a great post title), Apple green cavalry teeheehee, Noi, not the main girl character yet by far the strongest and yet most caring girl in the book, Fisher-Science Boy YAY!, Pan is a theatre guy and not gay, Nash is the hot athletic one and is gay, yay for stereo-type reversals, Tyler?, AHHHHH Alien boyfriend, ....ew?!?, Theodin :-)  Shakespeare and Peter Pan I may die happy, Oh...gees, Never knew the boy, The Host, Why are Aussie teens more mature?  No crushing Angst, eh happy/pat ending.

That my friends was pretty much word for word in order the thoughts I had time to jot down while reading this book...but what is it about you ask, well I will tell you. Be prepared for an epically long post!
Madeline wakes up in the rubble of St. James station, confused and hurt.  It takes a couple chapters but we learn that huge Spires of something have risen out of the earth at Earth's most populated cities spewing a cloud of glittering dust that may turn everybody into Edward Cullen...wait I mean we don't know what is going to happen with the dust.  Sydney Australia is one of those cities and this is just the beginning.  Madeline makes her way to her cousins (the androgynous cross-dressing, movie star Tyler) apartment and starts putting together what happened.  People are warned to stay indoors and try not to be exposed to the dust as they are not sure what it does yet.  Madeline gets a hold of her family and lets them know that she is safe.  Meanwhile her body starts to to weird things, like ache all over, giver a hunger like she has never

experienced, allows her to project and "shape" energy, and oh yeah it covers most of her body in a deep blue starry like substance.  After eating all the food in the apt.  Madeline goes in search of food and meets Noi, a baker who survived the initial dust dispersion.  She informs Madeline that the dust does one of three things, kills you, makes you Green, or makes you Blue, Noi is Blue like Madeline.  The girls run into a boy who appears to have fallen down the stairs and meet his friends, the beautiful Nash, the impish Pan, and Gav who drives and apple green Bug.  All of the boys are Blues and come from a boarding school where they are trying to help their fellow school mates recover.  After some practical other things being done, the boys and girls decide to band together, along with a young girl named Emily that they pick up along the way.  They start doing experiments, trying to figure out how to use their new found powers and keep enough food in the house to feed their new ravousness appetites.  Madeline, who is an introvert by nature, finds the best way to stay calm is to sketch and paint her new friends.  She is also attracted to the driven, calm and intelligent Fisher, who is doing everything he can to find out about the dust and the Spires.  Madeline and Noi become inseparable as friends, depending on each other far more then anyone else.  One day while experimenting with a large group of Blues at a local beach, huge white "kites" of energy start swooping in and possessing the Blues.  The group try and get away, but Gav is taken.

They acquire a new companion in the form of Min, a sarcastic, yet practical boy. They get away and move into an apartment with a secret office and rig up early warning devices.  Madeline finally acts on her feelings for Fish in an awkward but very sweet way, but they are interrupted by the Spire "singing".  By watching the news they find out that the possessed Blues are aliens called the En-Mott and that they are here for two years to settle primacy...whatever that means.  The humans are to turn over anybody who is Blue, and if they are not sufficient more dust will be released until they have enough.  The Green's it turns out are susceptible to the Spires and are essentially mind controlled by it.  This triggers a cycle of trying to figure out what to do, hiding and practicing.  It is discovered that some of the Blues (like Nash) instead of expelling energy actually need to absorb it from other Blues, these are called leech-Blues. Turns out that settling primacy means having several types of challenges, destroying buildings and humans in the process.  When one of the challengers turns out to be hunting Madeline down for being the strongest Blue, the group decides to head out.  They end up in a newly build hotel, and Madeline and Fish do the deed...several times (yay for teenage sex).  Madeline tells Noi that she has fallen in love with Fish.  The next day they are all captured and separated.  Madeline wakes up to an empty building and minimal food.  The En-Mott are trying to weaken her so that they can possess her.
 She runs into Fisher who informs her that he has actually been possessed the whole time and that she has never actually met the human half.  Understandably this devastates Madeline, but she keeps her head as the alien who now calls himself Theodin (yep after the king in Lord of the Rings) tells her that he has a plan to help her rid her world of aliens as he has come to love their group and want to protect them.  He makes her angry enough to "soul punch" the alien out of the body, killing the alien in the process.  She learns how to transfer energy into the human host so that he survives the transition and discovers that the host knows and remembers everything that happened while possessed (as my brother would say Awkward).  Putting aside her teen angst for later, Madeline and the newly released Fisher go and free the others, finding out the alien plans in the process.  I'm still not 100% sure what everything meant, but I did get that the aliens would come back every eight years, so just trying to wait out the promised two years wasn't going to help anything.  Using there new found fighting techniques the group (who have been calling themselves The Blue Musketeers) teaches the world how to fight of the aliens.  At the end Fisher tells Madeline that he does have feelings for her, and point blank tells her the difference between himself and the alien.  He gives Madeline the choice to come with him, or go with the other group.  Madeline chooses to see what happens with him.  The epilogue shows the group five years later, all with happy endings and a free if slightly torn up planet.

Whew, that was honestly just a bare bones plot synopsis, this book is so so so much more.  I loved this book, I couldn't put this book down, much work was not completed because of this book.  I think I liked this book so much because it was so gosh darn practical, especially for a young adult scifi book.  Let's start with the writing.  The first chapter of two totally confused me, it dumps you right into this confused, painful, wait did I just miss something moment.  At first I thought I had missed something because it was just like..what the hell?  This ended up working really well because that is exactly what our main character was feeling and right of the bat you had some insight into her new life.  I loved that other than glimpses here and there this story was mostly about the here and now, and a possible future.  The pacing of this book was really great, a mix between action, dialogue, humor, introspection and a lot of food. The author makes use of Shakespeare, Tolkien, Dumas, and Barrie in a way that fits beautifully into the story (I'm a sucker for an author who loves and respects other authors), and turning the group into The Blue Musketeers gave the reader a sense that the group found a way to be
cohesive. The words of course were vastly important, and this author does not shy away from words, but on the whole she is not overly flowery either, a very good balance.  On to the characters.  The characters were my favorite part of this book, the author did an amazing job making them seem authentic, everything they did or said seemed to make sense and have a real life motive.  Nobody was given words or actions just to further the plot.  The underlying feel of the group was that they were all friends, there was no unnecessary drama, no pointless misunderstandings, just a group of people who were trying to survive and along the way formed unbreakable bonds.  Even the romances were low key and plausible.  The main romance between Madeline and Fisher was even discussed as being the result of the situation, more than a long term development.  Madeline was a great main character (though I use that term loosely as almost all the characters were very well developed).  She was never the leader, never the most beautiful, her talent, while amazing, was not one that necessarily saved lives, she had a hard time not withdrawing and her tightest relationship was not with the boy she fell in love with, but the discovery of a best friend in Noi.  Noi was awesome, that is all I can say.  She is my favorite type of character, capable but willing to ask for help, strong and caring, bossy and able to bake.  She is the type that reminds you that you can be more then the strong, sexy shooter girl, or the quiet shy, yet oh-so-good girl.  Noi is as human as they come and I love her for it. Emily the young girl, full of young anger, this character really showed the difference a few years and some maturity can make. She was portrayed as 12/13 year old girl, not in the sense that she was whiny, but that her emotions would swing from clingy and scared, to unreasonably angry over the slightest thing.  I liked this contrast to the older more mature members of the team.  Fisher was a good character, possessed or not I loved the idea of the main romantic interest being a smarty mcsmarty pants.  Again he never belittled people for not knowing as much as him, and his joy came from learning, not so much knowing.  Nash was the perfect mix of strong and sweet, somebody who should

be around in any crisis.  Min...well we all know a Min, a guy who covers everything up with a sarcastic joke, but will be the first one to defend you when it comes down to it.  Gav was about as boy next-door as you can get, probably the most laid back character, willing to do what needed to be done. Then there is Pan, he is my other favorite character in the book.  He is constantly "performing" always quoting lines from plays and keeping the groups spirit up.  Tyler is the other character that is used in this book, though we don't get to know him very well as he is off-stage most of the time, but he is the epitome of staying true to oneself in the most extreme of ways, I'm not sure how effective this was in this type of story, but I'm glad he was in there anyways.  Overall the author figured out how to put in a ton of diversity, ethnic,
sexual orientation/identification, personality, gender, location in a manner that did not seemed forced.  The concept of the aliens was pretty cool, for some reason though, they kept reminding me of the book The Host (but that may be because of all the trailers that are out) I like that most of them had a complete disregard for human life, it made the killing of them easier to stomach.  I wish the history and current events of there race was a little clearer, but I don't think it mattered in the end.  I do however want my own dandelion dragon. The ending was a bit to pat and happy, but not implausible and after everything that had happened to these poor kids I guess they deserved a happy ending.  In case you couldn't tell, I loved this book and would recommend it to almost anyone.  I give it 9 out of 10 dandelion dragons.
What makes a book unputdownable for you?  How would you survive an alien invasion?  Why are Aussie teens so much more mature then American teens?