Review of Burn by Walter Jury & Sarah Fine

Review of Walter Jury & Sarah Fine's Burn

Release Date: May 12th, 2015

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

"Car chases, explosions and action galore—awesome."—Kirkus Reviews on Scan
At the cliffhanger ending of Scan, Tate loses the very thing he was fighting to protect, what his father had called the key to human survival. Tate doesn't have much time to worry about it because he needs to get away, to ensure he and Christina are safe. His father left him one last thing that can do just that—a safe house, which turns out to be a clue to what's really threatening the planet. As Tate follows the clues his father left behind, he starts to uncover the truth, realizing he's up against an enemy he's only beginning to understand.

A riveting, fast-paced "we are not alone" adventure, Burn thrills to the very end.

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So it's been a couple weeks, I believe, since my last review. I have been taking my time reading books, as well as sleeping a lot more. Oh! And I have been reading some manga... so I've just been a lazy reader. I also didn't review the last book I finished. So in total, I suck! Well, now I'm back!

When we ended Scan, Tate had found out his father's invention was a detection device that identified an alien race that was living on earth. They had been there for hundreds of years, breeding with Humans and now two-thirds of the world's population had some H2 (as they call themselves) DNA. At the end of the book, Tate sees a screen that gives the exact total of how many complete humans there are on earth, as well as people with H2 DNA and an unknown variable number. It had a question mark instead of a name for the species.

Burn picks up where its predecessor left off. Tate and his girlfriend Christina are holed up at one of his father's safe houses trying to plan out their next move. They believe that they are safe for the time being, but when they least expect it, in walks Leo. He claims to be the orphan nephew of Tate's father's best friend, George Fisher, who was killed in Scan. Frederick Archer was like a second father to Leo and helped train him, similarly to the way he trained Tate, when he was away on his "business" trips. Leo brings with him a brotherly quality that was lacking from the first book. I thought from the entrance of the character that he would also be a rival for Christina's love, but that theory did not pan out. When Tate sees a surveillance video from his home, where one of the Core H2 bosses is threatening Christina's Mom's life if he does not surrender himself, he decides to be the hero.

This book brings a whole different perspective into the world that Jury & Fine had created. We meet another alien race, the Sicarii, which end up being a violent parasitic race that prolongs their own lives by stealing the DNA of other beings. This new race of alien ends up bringing humanity & the H2 together in order to stop them from invading earth.

While there was no definitive finale to the book, I did get a feeling of an ending to the series. I enjoyed Burn, but I did not love it as much as I loved Scan. Their was an excitement in the action of the first book that was not as prominent in the second.