Endings are the boss battles of literature. If you botch the mechanics, the whole dungeon crawl feels like a waste of XP. I finished The Last Star at 2:00 AM on a Tuesday—when I absolutely should have been fixing a memory leak in my procedural terrain generator—and I'm still sitting here staring at my ceiling fan, trying to decide if I won or lost.
Here's the raw truth: this isn't the book I expected it to be.
The Voices Inside the Helmet
I usually get nervous with dual narrators. It can feel disjointed, like two different DMs trying to run the same campaign. But Phoebe Strole and Ben Yannette? They actually pull it off. (Phoebe is apparently an Earphones Award winner, which explains why she's so good at ripping your heart out through your headphones.)
The thing is, Yancey's writing shifts gears here. It goes from standard YA survival action to this weird, philosophical internal monologue about what it means to be human. If the narrators had played it straight—just reading words off the page—it would've been a snooze fest.
But they didn't. Strole, especially, leans into the desperation. There were moments where I literally stopped coding because the tension in her voice was messing with my focus. She captures that specific teenage exhaustion that feels like the end of the world (because, well, it literally is). It's not just "reading"; it's acting. And thank the Maker for that, because without that emotional anchor, the plot gets... complicated.
When the DM Loses His Notes (But In a Good Way?)
Let's talk about the story without spoiling the raid. The first book was straight survival. Aliens attack, we hide, we fight. Simple. The Last Star decides to get metaphysical on us.
The line between "The Others" and "Us" gets blurry. And honestly? It frustrated me at first. I wanted a clear win condition. I wanted Cassie to find the weak spot in the Death Star and blow it up. Instead, Yancey gives us a messy, moral quagmire.
Some people online are hating on the ending. I get it. It's not a clean critical hit. It's messy. But the more I sit here—ignoring my thesis advisor's emails—the more I think it fits. A clean ending wouldn't make sense for this world. The pacing is breathless, almost frantic, mirroring the characters' panic. It's not perfect. There are moments where the logic feels a bit thin, like a magic system that hasn't been fully play-tested. But the emotional payoff? That hit me harder than I expected.
Who Should Roll Initiative
If you've invested in the first two books, you need to see this through—even if the ending doesn't give you the clean victory lap you're hoping for. Skip it if you want tidy resolutions or lighter fare. If you need something less heavy in the sci-fi realm, Black Star Passes offers classic space opera without the existential dread.
Logging Off at 2 AM
Is it a flawless campaign finale? Nah. But it's a gut-punch of an ending that takes risks. Most YA series play it safe in the last quarter. Yancey didn't.
This is dark. It's heavy. And thanks to Strole and Yannette, it's incredibly immersive. I might be tired tomorrow, and Dr. Patel is definitely going to ask why my eyes are red, but it was worth the sleep deprivation. Now, if I could just figure out why my dungeon generator keeps spawning dragons in 2x2 rooms, I'd be all set.
