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Remnants #1
The Mayflower Project
Official Summary:
The end of the world. Not something most people think about. Not something we even expect to ever really happen. But what if you found out an asteroid the size of New Jersey were about to collide with the earth? What would you do? It's the year 2011, and that's the question Jobs is asking himself. The question he asked his family. He certainly didn't expect the answer he got. Didn't expect that in a very short time he and his family would be some of the lucky few selected to board a revamped space shuttle... A shuttle that would leave Earth just before the asteroid destroys it. But there are a couple of catches: The shuttle has no ultimate destination; and all those aboard will be placed in a state of suspended animation---indefinitely. Or at least until the computers find a habitable planet for them to live.
Back-of-Book Summary:
It's 2011. An asteroid is on a collision course with the earth. And eighty people have been given the opportunity to survive. To leave the planet before the world ends.
Jobs isn't quite sure of what's going on. Just that he and his family are a few of the lucky ones chosen to board a revamped space shuttle. A shuttle that will leave Earth just before the final impact. No one knows where they're going. Or if they'll make it there at all. Because there isn't a lot of time for questions. And there are fewer answers. . . .
The end of the world. Not something most people think about. Not something we even expect to ever really happen. But what if you found out an asteroid the size of New Jersey were about to collide with the earth? What would you do? It's the year 2011, and that's the question Jobs is asking himself. The question he asked his family. He certainly didn't expect the answer he got. Didn't expect that in a very short time he and his family would be some of the lucky few selected to board a revamped space shuttle... A shuttle that would leave Earth just before the asteroid destroys it. But there are a couple of catches: The shuttle has no ultimate destination; and all those aboard will be placed in a state of suspended animation---indefinitely. Or at least until the computers find a habitable planet for them to live.
Back-of-Book Summary:
It's 2011. An asteroid is on a collision course with the earth. And eighty people have been given the opportunity to survive. To leave the planet before the world ends.
Jobs isn't quite sure of what's going on. Just that he and his family are a few of the lucky ones chosen to board a revamped space shuttle. A shuttle that will leave Earth just before the final impact. No one knows where they're going. Or if they'll make it there at all. Because there isn't a lot of time for questions. And there are fewer answers. . . .
170 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2001
21 people are currently reading
1378 people want to read
About the author
K.A. Applegate
251 books486 followersalso published under the name Katherine Applegate
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
July 6, 2012
I've always been a huge fan of Katherine Applegate's Animorphs and Everworld series, and enjoyed every re-reading. It never occurred to me until recently to pick up Remnants, partly because no fan of Applegate ever talked about the series.
After reading the first book, I think I know why.
Plot Summary
The world is ending. Not because of a nuclear meltdown or global warming, which is presumably under our own control, but for cataclysmic events out of our control.
Namely...
Hopelessly underprepared, humanity's last ditch effort to preserve a smidgen of Earth is to send 80 people aboard the spaceship Mayflower. They will be put into hibernation pods as the spaceship hurtles millions of light-years into space to find a new world on which to settle.
My Reactions
The five harrowing days of panic and hopelessness leading up to the launch of the Mayflower make up a majority of the book. And it is massively depressing. I guess it's a credit to the author's writing that while I'm not an extinctionist by any means, her portrayal of the end of the world made me wonder what humanity could do when faced with something like this.
The movie Armageddon proposed drilling a hole into a meteorite the size of Texas and detonating a nuclear bomb inside of it. That granted some measure of comfort until my Astro professor likened it to dropping a nuclear bomb into a mile-deep hole actually in Texas. Would Texas split down the middle from that one measly bomb?
No, not this time, Bruce!
I found that the characters were blander than in Animorphs or Everworld. Alternating perspectives introduce us to the main players, but it is initially difficult to differentiate them. This is one of the main reasons why I did not enjoy the book as much. If all of humanity has died except for these few people, I want them to be extraordinarily interesting. With the exception of the First Son in whom I see the makings of another Visser Three type character, none of the others held my attention for long.
Overall, I did not enjoy the book very much. Again, the writing itself is not bad--as always, the author's style is no frills and harshly realistic. But the characters were too swallowed up in the intensity of the story for me to continue past this book. I may pick up the second book sometime in the future and see if that salvages the series for me, but in the meantime, 2 STARS and recommended for people who are (1) diehard fans of Katherine Applegate, or (2) can handle realistic depictions of the end of the world.
Now, excuse me while I make massive donations to NASA's meteorite detection fund.
After reading the first book, I think I know why.
Plot Summary
The world is ending. Not because of a nuclear meltdown or global warming, which is presumably under our own control, but for cataclysmic events out of our control.
Namely...
Hopelessly underprepared, humanity's last ditch effort to preserve a smidgen of Earth is to send 80 people aboard the spaceship Mayflower. They will be put into hibernation pods as the spaceship hurtles millions of light-years into space to find a new world on which to settle.
My Reactions
The five harrowing days of panic and hopelessness leading up to the launch of the Mayflower make up a majority of the book. And it is massively depressing. I guess it's a credit to the author's writing that while I'm not an extinctionist by any means, her portrayal of the end of the world made me wonder what humanity could do when faced with something like this.
The movie Armageddon proposed drilling a hole into a meteorite the size of Texas and detonating a nuclear bomb inside of it. That granted some measure of comfort until my Astro professor likened it to dropping a nuclear bomb into a mile-deep hole actually in Texas. Would Texas split down the middle from that one measly bomb?
No, not this time, Bruce!
I found that the characters were blander than in Animorphs or Everworld. Alternating perspectives introduce us to the main players, but it is initially difficult to differentiate them. This is one of the main reasons why I did not enjoy the book as much. If all of humanity has died except for these few people, I want them to be extraordinarily interesting. With the exception of the First Son in whom I see the makings of another Visser Three type character, none of the others held my attention for long.
Overall, I did not enjoy the book very much. Again, the writing itself is not bad--as always, the author's style is no frills and harshly realistic. But the characters were too swallowed up in the intensity of the story for me to continue past this book. I may pick up the second book sometime in the future and see if that salvages the series for me, but in the meantime, 2 STARS and recommended for people who are (1) diehard fans of Katherine Applegate, or (2) can handle realistic depictions of the end of the world.
Now, excuse me while I make massive donations to NASA's meteorite detection fund.
June 12, 2016
Holy this is not a book for kids.
This book may be under two hundred pages in length but it is intense in a way very few books I've read have ever been. It's still got my heart racing a little bit to be honest. My heart is RACING! Holy crap! Do you know how odd it is that a book would thrill me this much?! And this is a middle-grade or young-adult book? THIS is a book for young teens?! This book is INSANE! In the best, most gripping, suspenseful, thrilling, horrifying, amazing, disgusting, shocking, insane of ways! It's literally INSANE! I don't even know what to think! I was stunned a moment ago, and now I'm reeling after finishing this book it was so amazingly good! Holy God and blessed Christmas! *Throws up arms and shakes head, still shocked*
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO FEEL.
THIS WAS TOO GOOD A BOOK TO JUST TALK ABOUT IT!
All I know is that I'm shaken up and I love it, and I need to keep reading more. I'm already angsting inside because I only was able to take home two books out of the series, but the other part of me is screaming-- "YES! THIS IS A SERIES! THANK GOD! I NEED SO MUCH MORE OF THIS!!!"
If you love science fiction, thrillers, suspense, psychological books, dystopians especially, you HAVE to read this series. You HAVE to read this series. I don't care if it's some ten years old. I don't care that it's a series for young adults or whatever. Ignore your age, READ THIS BOOK and then the REST of the series.
But be forewarned: It's not exactly immensely graphic, but the imagery and scenarios can be shockingly vivid and disturbing. It only gets worse later on if what I remember of this series is correct. So go into this with a level of caution if you've got a queasy stomach. It can and probably will shake you up, but that's what makes this book great: It does it so that it hits home for you. Because, well-- the Earth's gonna be destroyed. That's the entire premise of this book. You want it to hit home. And, oh man, did Katherine Applegate do a fantastic job of that. Seriously, after I finish this series, I'm reading her other series: Animorphs. This is an author that deserves a lot of attention if she's to be judged by this first book. I'm going on to the second book in the series now and I'll keep you posted.
But man. This is gonna be good.
See you all in the next book! Because you'd better give this one a shot. It's too good to pass up.
February 11, 2010
Why am I rereading books for teens/young adults? Call it nostalgia - I think I'm trying to recreate the joy I felt as a kid when I read books for fun. Maybe it'll help me get over the automatic lethargy I experience when picking up a book to read nowadays.
Anyways, I picked this book up again primarily to revist K.A. Applegate's vision of the year 2010-2011, and whether her vision from 2001 of the future would match up to today. To her credit, she basically took some of the newer technologies and trends from 2001 and made them mainstream in 2011 - which is basically what has happened.
As in Remnants 2011-verse, we use a lot of touch flatscreens for everything, whether for monitors, accessing a GPS or car, or displaying photos. Using these technologies for web searches anywhere, anytime is also commonplace. No, we don't have cars that drive themselves, and we still don't quite use voice-recognition for all software, but we do have disembodied female computer voices to assist with navigating cars. Quite a few of us wear Bluetooth headsets ("links" in Remnants-verse) all of the time. Our headsets can't do webcam, video, or camera like their links can, but iPhones and other smart phones that we always carry around can and do (also without the photographed subject's knowing, sometimes). No, we don't refer to everyone by a "chosen" name (i.e., handle or screenname), but we come pretty darn close with Second Life and Twitter.
All in all, K.A. Applegate did a pretty good job of creating a believeable and fairly accurate vision of the future. Aside from the whole Earth getting hit by an asteroid and all. I hope. (Reminder to self: NOT a good book to read right before bed.)
Anyways, I picked this book up again primarily to revist K.A. Applegate's vision of the year 2010-2011, and whether her vision from 2001 of the future would match up to today. To her credit, she basically took some of the newer technologies and trends from 2001 and made them mainstream in 2011 - which is basically what has happened.
As in Remnants 2011-verse, we use a lot of touch flatscreens for everything, whether for monitors, accessing a GPS or car, or displaying photos. Using these technologies for web searches anywhere, anytime is also commonplace. No, we don't have cars that drive themselves, and we still don't quite use voice-recognition for all software, but we do have disembodied female computer voices to assist with navigating cars. Quite a few of us wear Bluetooth headsets ("links" in Remnants-verse) all of the time. Our headsets can't do webcam, video, or camera like their links can, but iPhones and other smart phones that we always carry around can and do (also without the photographed subject's knowing, sometimes). No, we don't refer to everyone by a "chosen" name (i.e., handle or screenname), but we come pretty darn close with Second Life and Twitter.
All in all, K.A. Applegate did a pretty good job of creating a believeable and fairly accurate vision of the future. Aside from the whole Earth getting hit by an asteroid and all. I hope. (Reminder to self: NOT a good book to read right before bed.)
August 12, 2024
I cannot stress enough that this is even more batshit than animorphs
July 15, 2020
Okay, finished the first one and I am very confused.
This book sort of sets up the premise for the apocalypse. It introduces the characters and then ends at a crucial point. Ideally, it should have had me rushing through the next book to find out what happens. But it did not feel so? I am not invested in the characters at all. But the books seem to be quite short, so I may give them a try?
Also, most reviews tell me that the book gets quite dark. So it has my curiosity. Still deliberating whether I should continue the series.
This book sort of sets up the premise for the apocalypse. It introduces the characters and then ends at a crucial point. Ideally, it should have had me rushing through the next book to find out what happens. But it did not feel so? I am not invested in the characters at all. But the books seem to be quite short, so I may give them a try?
Also, most reviews tell me that the book gets quite dark. So it has my curiosity. Still deliberating whether I should continue the series.
September 29, 2024
Ever since re-reading/finishing K.A. Applegate’s ANIMORPHS series in 2020, I’ve been what can be fairly be called obsessed. Because of my great fondness for this series, I became persuaded that I should read another series from the author, EVERWORLD, which I had never read as a youth but which I saw advertised in the back of several installments of Animorphs. I bought the whole 12-book series outright and read it in 2021; I found much to enjoy in it, though it obviously didn’t match the highs of the more renowned series that brought me to it. Another series from K.A. Applegate frequently seen in advertisements at the end of the Animorphs books is this one—REMNANTS. It’s another I never read in my childhood, but lately I’ve been thinking that I ought to at least give it a go. I was truly only hoping to get one or two of the books to get a taste for the series, but I found a set of the first 10 books on eBay for $30 and, well, who could pass that up? When the shipment arrived, it actually included the first 12 books of this 14-book series! I’m locked in now. So, after reading the first book, am I looking at the rest of the series with eagerness or with trepidation?
Between the two, I think eagerness is closer to my feeling, though that’s said with a caveat: I still don’t really know where the series is going. The entirety of The Mayflower Project is prologue; presumably, the real plot begins in the second book. So much of this book is devoted to introducing its cast of characters—half a dozen teens, the majority of whom go by ridiculous nicknames (Jobs, 2Face, Mo’Steel, D-Caf)—and slowly moving the pieces into place for them to come together on the title rocket ship, the Mayflower. You see, these teens are among a group of 80 people selected to be sent off-world as an apocalyptic event nears. At the start of the book, an enormous asteroid is due to hit the Earth in less than a week, and much of the book is about the characters coming to terms with the reality that billions of people will soon be dead. One of the main things I appreciated about ANIMORPHS was how dark it got; that is, how it leaned into the severity of war, the sickening quality of violence and the trauma one necessarily experiences as a result. The Mayflower Project certainly brings that same sensibility to the fore right out the gate.
The book begins with a literal prologue chapter about the asteroid, referencing where it was at various points in world history and describing it being hit by a comet which changes its trajectory just enough to put it on a collision course with Earth. That sense of destiny at work is immediately exciting. We’re then introduced to the futuristic world of 2011, as envisioned in 2001 when this book was published. It’s a world with autopiloted cars, combination phone/computer accessories called “links”, flat-screens which show rotating collections of artwork, and mini-readers that can hold up to 16 (!) full-length books! Of course, all of this will be wiped out before long.
Unlike ANIMORPHS or EVERWORLD, this book toggles between the primary characters through a third-person omniscient narrator. It reminded me more strongly of Michael Grant’s GONE series than either of the other Applegate series (I’ve only read two entries in the GONE series to date). As it happens, “K.A. Applegate” is actually a pen-name for husband-wife team Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant together, so I’m curious whether Grant did in fact contribute more to the writing of this book. GONE is also about a large group of children and teens forced to take care of themselves in a strange, changed world, which I suspect is where this series is going. This book, though, wallows in the world’s end. Although that fate is on the horizon literally from the beginning, it really comes into focus when Mark and his brother D-Caf are plotting to stow away on the Mayflower despite not having been chosen. In fact, Mark’s plan is to take the place of one of the chosen. How, you ask? Well, he answers, under the circumstances killing doesn’t have the same moral weight; after all, everybody is dead anyway. No, I take that back: it really comes into focus when a “pebble” broken off of the asteroid makes impact with Earth days before the main event. The description of this moment is… horrific.
The detail in it is what makes it so hauntingly real. And then there’s Applegate’s penchant for hard-hitting, short sentences. That A million dead in less than five seconds is so damn heavy. That chapter ends with the love interest of Jobs, one of the primary characters, being IMPALED BY A WOODEN BOARD, shuddering and dying on camera while livestreaming the destruction. It would have been so easy for the book to just cut to black, so to speak, to end the chapter with her watching the oncoming explosion with shock and terror, to soften the moment with something like, “And that was the last thing Corelia ever saw.” Instead, the book stays focused on her to the end. That is a choice. It’s an intense choice.
Before that moment, though, there are a good number of solid quotes pertaining to the characters’ distress about the inevitable. Jobs at one point wants to comfort his crying mother but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out. “He thought too much about what he ought to say, he knew that. He looked too long for the perfect words and ended up saying nothing at all. But what did you say at the end of the world?” Later, as they prepare to board the rocket ship, there’s another comment on the probable futility of the mission: “[I]n a room filled with scientists and kids of scientists you couldn’t ignore facts: The Mayflower didn’t represent a real chance, it represented death delayed. Or death unnoticed, unremarked: death deprived of all the drama and majesty of the shattering, fiery annihilation that was being prepared by that cold-blooded killer Mother Nature.” God, that phrase… shattering, fiery annihilation is terribly poetic and evocative. Let me share just one more. Jobs recognizes that everybody remaining on Earth is going to die and asks his friend Mo’Steel (ugh, what an awful name) what the point of it is. Mo replies, “Everyone always dies, man. Always been that way. And I don’t think it ever did have a point. Did it?” All of these quotes strike me as powerfully matter-of-fact and this, again, is so characteristic of K.A. Applegate. She’s (they are?) without doubt one of my favorite authors.
All that said, one thing that the negative reviews mention is the relative lack of individualization of the characters. We’re introduced to several different names, but they mostly run together. They each have their own backstories, but for the most part don’t manage an individual voice at this point. The ones who do have an individual voice—Mo’Steel and the obvious-villain Yago, son of the (Black, female!) President of the United States—come across as caricatures, too over-the-top to take seriously. I do agree this is an issue. As I’ve already alluded to, another complaint from those who’ve rated the book lower is the sense that THE MAYFLOWER PROJECT is only the 30-second free sample, if you catch my meaning. This book is ALL set-up. It’s a new movie showing Peter Parker first becoming Spider-Man yet again. And in the meantime, there’s not really much that gets explored from an emotional level beyond the grief and confusion of the world’s impending doom, so there’s an argument that the narrative of the book treads water a bit both in terms of the action (killing time until the ending when the Mayflower blasts off) and in terms of the emotional journey (endlessly rehashing the same point). I think this is an entirely valid perspective to have and I do sympathize with it to a degree.
Personally, though, I wasn’t bothered by the deep focus on the numb disbelief and fright the characters are experiencing. I thought it appropriate and well-captured in Applegate’s writing. I was bothered by the thin character work, but I’m aware this is a 14-book series and I’m confident that the characters will become more individualized as the story progresses. I do think that there would have been more opportunity to do that if the book focused on one or two people instead, as the ANIMORPHS and EVERWORLD books did; because the book kept introducing new characters, it was hard not to get the sense that the book wasn’t really progressing for the longest time. But I’m willing to forgive this for the moment on faith that it’s a temporary issue. And ultimately, those complaints have to be measured against the fact that there are a number of cool scenes. A whole action sequence near the end in which Jobs and Mo’Steel have to do a space-walk on the outside of the Mayflower to fix a broken solar sail with a countdown timer adding tension, followed by a view of the Earth’s total demolition… I mean, these are pretty great moments.
Ultimately, I’m calling this a 3.5-star rating rounded up. I think it’s an intriguing start to the series, but it’s most definitely just a start. Let’s see where this thing goes next.
P.S. I hate the cover of this book, a boy lying on his back in a gray space with light at his feet and some sort of cables plugged into the top of his head. It feels so generic and, moreover, it’s not accurate to the book. At no point does somebody plug some weird coaxial cables into ports in their forehead. This cover I find almost embarrassing.
P.P.S. Another thing worth mentioning is that that girl Cordelia, the one who films the “pebble” hitting San Francisco, gets a very brief phone call from her trans great-aunt. The great-aunt only has one line of dialogue and is in no way an important character. It’s just meant to fill out the world. I just find it notable that this book, written as I said in 2001—just as the anti-gay panic of the George W. Bush era was griding into gear—includes a transgender character in such an off-handed, nonchalant way. I’ve seen a lot of people recommending K.A. Applegate over J.K. Rowling due to the latter’s vicious anti-trans bigotry, and I’ve seen it suggested that Tobias becoming a bird in ANIMORPHS either is or at least can be interpreted as a metaphor for gender dysphoria, but the inclusion of this character still seems surprisingly progressive for the time.
Between the two, I think eagerness is closer to my feeling, though that’s said with a caveat: I still don’t really know where the series is going. The entirety of The Mayflower Project is prologue; presumably, the real plot begins in the second book. So much of this book is devoted to introducing its cast of characters—half a dozen teens, the majority of whom go by ridiculous nicknames (Jobs, 2Face, Mo’Steel, D-Caf)—and slowly moving the pieces into place for them to come together on the title rocket ship, the Mayflower. You see, these teens are among a group of 80 people selected to be sent off-world as an apocalyptic event nears. At the start of the book, an enormous asteroid is due to hit the Earth in less than a week, and much of the book is about the characters coming to terms with the reality that billions of people will soon be dead. One of the main things I appreciated about ANIMORPHS was how dark it got; that is, how it leaned into the severity of war, the sickening quality of violence and the trauma one necessarily experiences as a result. The Mayflower Project certainly brings that same sensibility to the fore right out the gate.
The book begins with a literal prologue chapter about the asteroid, referencing where it was at various points in world history and describing it being hit by a comet which changes its trajectory just enough to put it on a collision course with Earth. That sense of destiny at work is immediately exciting. We’re then introduced to the futuristic world of 2011, as envisioned in 2001 when this book was published. It’s a world with autopiloted cars, combination phone/computer accessories called “links”, flat-screens which show rotating collections of artwork, and mini-readers that can hold up to 16 (!) full-length books! Of course, all of this will be wiped out before long.
Unlike ANIMORPHS or EVERWORLD, this book toggles between the primary characters through a third-person omniscient narrator. It reminded me more strongly of Michael Grant’s GONE series than either of the other Applegate series (I’ve only read two entries in the GONE series to date). As it happens, “K.A. Applegate” is actually a pen-name for husband-wife team Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant together, so I’m curious whether Grant did in fact contribute more to the writing of this book. GONE is also about a large group of children and teens forced to take care of themselves in a strange, changed world, which I suspect is where this series is going. This book, though, wallows in the world’s end. Although that fate is on the horizon literally from the beginning, it really comes into focus when Mark and his brother D-Caf are plotting to stow away on the Mayflower despite not having been chosen. In fact, Mark’s plan is to take the place of one of the chosen. How, you ask? Well, he answers, under the circumstances killing doesn’t have the same moral weight; after all, everybody is dead anyway. No, I take that back: it really comes into focus when a “pebble” broken off of the asteroid makes impact with Earth days before the main event. The description of this moment is… horrific.
The pebble slammed into San Francisco Bay just short of hitting Alameda.
The explosion was equal to a nuclear weapon.
The entire contents of San Francisco Bay, billions upon billions of gallons of water shot skyward, a vast column of superheated steam. Millions of tons of dirt, the floor of the bay, erupted, a volcano.
The immediate shock wave flattened every building in Alameda and Oakland. Skyscrapers were simply knocked over like a kids’ pile of blocks. Frame houses collapsed. Cars were tossed around like leaves in the wind.
The water of the bay surged in, sucking the USS Reagan into the bay, a swirling bath toy, then all at once the water blew back. The USS Reagan was picked up and thrown into and through the Golden Gate Bridge. The rest-red bridge wrapped bodily around the flying ship. The bridge supports ripped from the shores. Cable snapped like bullwhips.
The shock waves reached San Francisco itself. The downtown area pancaked. Areas that were landfill simply melted away, quick sand, entire square miles fo the city sank down into the water.
A million dead in less than five seconds.
The detail in it is what makes it so hauntingly real. And then there’s Applegate’s penchant for hard-hitting, short sentences. That A million dead in less than five seconds is so damn heavy. That chapter ends with the love interest of Jobs, one of the primary characters, being IMPALED BY A WOODEN BOARD, shuddering and dying on camera while livestreaming the destruction. It would have been so easy for the book to just cut to black, so to speak, to end the chapter with her watching the oncoming explosion with shock and terror, to soften the moment with something like, “And that was the last thing Corelia ever saw.” Instead, the book stays focused on her to the end. That is a choice. It’s an intense choice.
Before that moment, though, there are a good number of solid quotes pertaining to the characters’ distress about the inevitable. Jobs at one point wants to comfort his crying mother but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out. “He thought too much about what he ought to say, he knew that. He looked too long for the perfect words and ended up saying nothing at all. But what did you say at the end of the world?” Later, as they prepare to board the rocket ship, there’s another comment on the probable futility of the mission: “[I]n a room filled with scientists and kids of scientists you couldn’t ignore facts: The Mayflower didn’t represent a real chance, it represented death delayed. Or death unnoticed, unremarked: death deprived of all the drama and majesty of the shattering, fiery annihilation that was being prepared by that cold-blooded killer Mother Nature.” God, that phrase… shattering, fiery annihilation is terribly poetic and evocative. Let me share just one more. Jobs recognizes that everybody remaining on Earth is going to die and asks his friend Mo’Steel (ugh, what an awful name) what the point of it is. Mo replies, “Everyone always dies, man. Always been that way. And I don’t think it ever did have a point. Did it?” All of these quotes strike me as powerfully matter-of-fact and this, again, is so characteristic of K.A. Applegate. She’s (they are?) without doubt one of my favorite authors.
All that said, one thing that the negative reviews mention is the relative lack of individualization of the characters. We’re introduced to several different names, but they mostly run together. They each have their own backstories, but for the most part don’t manage an individual voice at this point. The ones who do have an individual voice—Mo’Steel and the obvious-villain Yago, son of the (Black, female!) President of the United States—come across as caricatures, too over-the-top to take seriously. I do agree this is an issue. As I’ve already alluded to, another complaint from those who’ve rated the book lower is the sense that THE MAYFLOWER PROJECT is only the 30-second free sample, if you catch my meaning. This book is ALL set-up. It’s a new movie showing Peter Parker first becoming Spider-Man yet again. And in the meantime, there’s not really much that gets explored from an emotional level beyond the grief and confusion of the world’s impending doom, so there’s an argument that the narrative of the book treads water a bit both in terms of the action (killing time until the ending when the Mayflower blasts off) and in terms of the emotional journey (endlessly rehashing the same point). I think this is an entirely valid perspective to have and I do sympathize with it to a degree.
Personally, though, I wasn’t bothered by the deep focus on the numb disbelief and fright the characters are experiencing. I thought it appropriate and well-captured in Applegate’s writing. I was bothered by the thin character work, but I’m aware this is a 14-book series and I’m confident that the characters will become more individualized as the story progresses. I do think that there would have been more opportunity to do that if the book focused on one or two people instead, as the ANIMORPHS and EVERWORLD books did; because the book kept introducing new characters, it was hard not to get the sense that the book wasn’t really progressing for the longest time. But I’m willing to forgive this for the moment on faith that it’s a temporary issue. And ultimately, those complaints have to be measured against the fact that there are a number of cool scenes. A whole action sequence near the end in which Jobs and Mo’Steel have to do a space-walk on the outside of the Mayflower to fix a broken solar sail with a countdown timer adding tension, followed by a view of the Earth’s total demolition… I mean, these are pretty great moments.
Ultimately, I’m calling this a 3.5-star rating rounded up. I think it’s an intriguing start to the series, but it’s most definitely just a start. Let’s see where this thing goes next.
P.S. I hate the cover of this book, a boy lying on his back in a gray space with light at his feet and some sort of cables plugged into the top of his head. It feels so generic and, moreover, it’s not accurate to the book. At no point does somebody plug some weird coaxial cables into ports in their forehead. This cover I find almost embarrassing.
P.P.S. Another thing worth mentioning is that that girl Cordelia, the one who films the “pebble” hitting San Francisco, gets a very brief phone call from her trans great-aunt. The great-aunt only has one line of dialogue and is in no way an important character. It’s just meant to fill out the world. I just find it notable that this book, written as I said in 2001—just as the anti-gay panic of the George W. Bush era was griding into gear—includes a transgender character in such an off-handed, nonchalant way. I’ve seen a lot of people recommending K.A. Applegate over J.K. Rowling due to the latter’s vicious anti-trans bigotry, and I’ve seen it suggested that Tobias becoming a bird in ANIMORPHS either is or at least can be interpreted as a metaphor for gender dysphoria, but the inclusion of this character still seems surprisingly progressive for the time.
August 20, 2008
This series has been catching my eye for a while (since Animorphs was, seriously, one of the BEST THINGS I EVER READ), so I decided to start up book 1. Before the first book is over, Earth is hit with a giant asteroid and everyone dies. Lovely.
December 26, 2011
I realize this a series for older children...early teens? maybe. But i found this book in with a whole set of Animorph books i bought for one of my adopted Grandsons. I found the books at our local Salvation Army store. Now i am hooked! Remnants is packed with good story telling and truly makes you want to keep reading the story. Sigh! i am now searching the used book stores for these books. There are 14 in the series. It starts out with a group of people leaving earth....how does she tell this story in the rest of the books? OH I CANT WAIT! lol For me it was a very quick read. I enjoyed the characters and the action to save a few. Jobs is an awesome kid and so is his best friend Mo'Steel. Truly a good story....so far...cant wait to find the rest of these books!
December 2, 2020
Um.
I know, I know, I know.
This is a middle-grade to young-adult book, but.
It is, simply put, very, very, very good. And that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
I know, I know, I know.
This is a middle-grade to young-adult book, but.
It is, simply put, very, very, very good. And that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
December 27, 2018
I really hope the rest of the series holds up better than this book does, because this was awful. This was utterly pointless; you could compress this into a prologue for the next book of the series and lose nothing of value. It just introduces the characters one by one; little more happens in this book. It does a terrible job of setting the tone for the rest of the series (which is weird as hell, and dark in a more interesting way), and it's boring. This is a textbook example of the kind of lazy writing that results in getting your manuscript back with 'show don't tell' written on it. It's almost completely devoid of any sort of dramatic structure; you know what's coming in the end, and it's basically a straight line to that point. And it's depressing as all hell. And not even depressing in a particularly interesting or creative way; it just repeatedly asks you to contemplate everyone on earth dying. Mo'Steel is supposed to be comic relief, but he's not particularly funny, so he just ends up feeling out of place. There are a couple of interesting moments here and there, which is what saves this from an even lower score, but on the whole, I can tell why this series never took off. I have trouble imagining any kid finding this depressing slog of a book interesting enough to stick around.
April 1, 2024
I found this book upon looking into a certain horror concept regarding the conscious experience of infinity and the despair and madness there is to find there.
An old fashioned sci fi doomsday setting is the backdrop of this first instalment. Asteroid is going to collide with earth. The cast is fairly interesting, what my main issue is because it's a doomsday scenario, the first third has to go through all the obligatory scenes of, "Oh no, I can't believe the entire Earth is gone, we are it, there will be nothing except us, a couple amongst billions of lives cut short in an ins
tant" etc. It can be dull if you've already seen it before and I can't say books have the advantage of variety of presentation.
But then the existential threat we all know fades into the backdrop and lets the characters really start to shine and gives tasty hints of what is to come. This is about when I realised that I shouldn't put this book down and see it to the end.
The writing builds tension wonderfully the closer they get to the deadline and there is so much at stake.
Closer to a 5 than a 6.
An old fashioned sci fi doomsday setting is the backdrop of this first instalment. Asteroid is going to collide with earth. The cast is fairly interesting, what my main issue is because it's a doomsday scenario, the first third has to go through all the obligatory scenes of, "Oh no, I can't believe the entire Earth is gone, we are it, there will be nothing except us, a couple amongst billions of lives cut short in an ins
tant" etc. It can be dull if you've already seen it before and I can't say books have the advantage of variety of presentation.
But then the existential threat we all know fades into the backdrop and lets the characters really start to shine and gives tasty hints of what is to come. This is about when I realised that I shouldn't put this book down and see it to the end.
The writing builds tension wonderfully the closer they get to the deadline and there is so much at stake.
Closer to a 5 than a 6.
February 3, 2024
Such a good book that quickly captures your attention. I loved this book when I was younger - I remember getting it at a Scholastic book fair and then my mom bought me the entire series from random online stores back when we had dial up internet. I read this one aloud to my nine year old. He seemed as interested as me!
February 25, 2022
Short but a weirdo. I don't really care of the characters 🤷♀️ I'll give a try to the series because it's short and rapid-reading.
January 1, 2025
What Brandon Sanderson should've been
March 30, 2018
I think this book tried to do too much in too little pages. It had to set up a scenario, a world lore, and characters.... and it failed at all of it. Everything is just bland and boring.
January 9, 2017
It's rare when it happens, but it's the greatest thing when I fall in love with a book from the very first words -- when I know from the very start that this will be one of the best ever books that I've read. That's how I wanted to start this post, but it bugged me that that wasn't quite true. While I loved the story from the very first words of it, there was a puzzling forward that I scratched my head over before falling head over heels in love with the story itself.
The plot was about the world ending. But, unlike other end of the world stories, the author took the reader through everything that was happening, slow and scary step by step. An asteroid was coming, one miles across. One that made the one that killed off the dinosaurs look like a grain of sand. This first book was about how the news stories got out and how people reacted. The world would be destroyed -- literally destroyed, broken up, bits of it sent into space. Every human would be killed, there would be no planet left.
So why did the forward-- (Oh HELL I was googling so I could get one detail right and read a big spoiler. GRRRRR Idiot me! I was trying to be careful! Dammit. ;;) Anyway. The forward talked about a battle from our real history. Two armies, one of them lost 6,000 men, the other lost 70,000 (not sure if those figures are right, something like that, not going to google again. Endless tears!). The author ended that section with a line like "this is the definition of annihilation". That left me scratching my head. Why, in a book about a natural disaster, did the author start with a forward about a real war in history? What did the two have to do with each other? Then I remembered: Somewhere I had read about asteroids being used in space wars, you could destroy a planet with one, just like what was happening in this book. But why? While the book is set in the near future, there was no alien contact that we knew of. Why would Joe Random Alien want to destroy the Earth?
The book's plot never hinted at anything along the lines of war, so I still don't didn't (THANKS SPOILER) know how that tied in to everything.
K. A. Applegate is such a great writer. It shouldn't surprise me, since her and her husband have been writing for decades. They wrote the Animorphs series together, and probably hundreds of other YA books. I love love love this world she created for Remnants -- the tech is just a bit advanced from the current world, which makes me want it even more since it feels so close. The characters (mostly teens) are interesting, not annoying like many teens in YA books are.
I picked this book to read by chance. I did my "it's time to pick a book from the very bottom of my To Read Pile," and amusingly the choice was between her book and one of her husband's. I knew nothing about either of them, other than his was funny and hers was creepy. While I was in the mood for neither of those, I was less not in the mood for creepy, so I picked Remnants. I'm so glad I did!
I can't believe how genuinely creepy this book is. After being creeped out by one of her husband's books, I emailed him to ask if he had had any trouble selling something so honestly scary, something that scared adult me, as a YA book. He told me that he can get away with that in YA books because kids aren't experienced with the world enough to recognize fear and danger in the same way adults do. For example, in Remnants, the kids would be (rightfully!) scared about the world ending, but for me, it was how the people were behaving in the last days and hours that scared me. The world being destroyed was inevitable, but the scary way people were acting (mobs, being willing to kill, killing themselves, killing their families to "save" them) was what was chilling to me.
Book one ended with 80 humans on a space shuttle, one filled with untested tech. Solar wings that had never been used before. Hibernation pods that had been only used on animals and even then with only limited success. While the book didn't exactly end on a cliffhanger (all the characters asleep in the pods), if the second book hadn't been out already, I sure would have been frustrated waiting for it!
This is a 14 book series, and happily they're all out now. I started the second book immediately upon finishing the first. It has a great mystery right from the start, though that spoiler I read ruined it for me. I can only hope the spoiler information comes out in the second book and wasn't a series-long mystery. So sad!
The plot was about the world ending. But, unlike other end of the world stories, the author took the reader through everything that was happening, slow and scary step by step. An asteroid was coming, one miles across. One that made the one that killed off the dinosaurs look like a grain of sand. This first book was about how the news stories got out and how people reacted. The world would be destroyed -- literally destroyed, broken up, bits of it sent into space. Every human would be killed, there would be no planet left.
So why did the forward-- (Oh HELL I was googling so I could get one detail right and read a big spoiler. GRRRRR Idiot me! I was trying to be careful! Dammit. ;;) Anyway. The forward talked about a battle from our real history. Two armies, one of them lost 6,000 men, the other lost 70,000 (not sure if those figures are right, something like that, not going to google again. Endless tears!). The author ended that section with a line like "this is the definition of annihilation". That left me scratching my head. Why, in a book about a natural disaster, did the author start with a forward about a real war in history? What did the two have to do with each other? Then I remembered: Somewhere I had read about asteroids being used in space wars, you could destroy a planet with one, just like what was happening in this book. But why? While the book is set in the near future, there was no alien contact that we knew of. Why would Joe Random Alien want to destroy the Earth?
The book's plot never hinted at anything along the lines of war, so I still don't didn't (THANKS SPOILER) know how that tied in to everything.
K. A. Applegate is such a great writer. It shouldn't surprise me, since her and her husband have been writing for decades. They wrote the Animorphs series together, and probably hundreds of other YA books. I love love love this world she created for Remnants -- the tech is just a bit advanced from the current world, which makes me want it even more since it feels so close. The characters (mostly teens) are interesting, not annoying like many teens in YA books are.
I picked this book to read by chance. I did my "it's time to pick a book from the very bottom of my To Read Pile," and amusingly the choice was between her book and one of her husband's. I knew nothing about either of them, other than his was funny and hers was creepy. While I was in the mood for neither of those, I was less not in the mood for creepy, so I picked Remnants. I'm so glad I did!
I can't believe how genuinely creepy this book is. After being creeped out by one of her husband's books, I emailed him to ask if he had had any trouble selling something so honestly scary, something that scared adult me, as a YA book. He told me that he can get away with that in YA books because kids aren't experienced with the world enough to recognize fear and danger in the same way adults do. For example, in Remnants, the kids would be (rightfully!) scared about the world ending, but for me, it was how the people were behaving in the last days and hours that scared me. The world being destroyed was inevitable, but the scary way people were acting (mobs, being willing to kill, killing themselves, killing their families to "save" them) was what was chilling to me.
Book one ended with 80 humans on a space shuttle, one filled with untested tech. Solar wings that had never been used before. Hibernation pods that had been only used on animals and even then with only limited success. While the book didn't exactly end on a cliffhanger (all the characters asleep in the pods), if the second book hadn't been out already, I sure would have been frustrated waiting for it!
This is a 14 book series, and happily they're all out now. I started the second book immediately upon finishing the first. It has a great mystery right from the start, though that spoiler I read ruined it for me. I can only hope the spoiler information comes out in the second book and wasn't a series-long mystery. So sad!
October 3, 2016
My memories of Remnants are the haziest of all my KAA Rereads -- in part because I never actually finished the series -- so this one I'm practically approaching as a fresh reader! Admittedly this book is necessarily very different from later ones in the series, because there's a lot of setup necessary; they need to introduce all of the big ensemble cast, establish them, and then get them onto the Mayflower and off Earth.
The premise reminds me so much of the movie 2012 or the TV show The 100; this idea of global catastrophe necessitating a small group of survivors to move on and start anew elsewhere.
Random points:
• My favourite thing in book #1 might be the cyberpunk/sci fi/futuristic details. It's 2011 and yet we have self-driving cars, tiny 'links' (which are basically smartphones lbr), corporatisation of monuments, gene alteration and DNA modification, body modifications, a black female president, etc. I just really love these worldbuilding details! It's not super futuristic -- a lot of this stuff we have now, in 2016 -- but it's still slightly ahead of its time.
• Relatedly, the book makes me laugh a little because some of the characters' names are SO DATED and ridiculous. Jobs is fine, but Mo'Steel, 2Face, and D-Caf? I can't really take them seriously. But if you just think of it in context of Neuromancer, then these ridiculous nicknames fit right into that sort of genre.
• Characters: I like Jobs as a protagonist, but mostly I love his adrenaline fiend bff Mo because there are shades of Marco/Edilio in that character, imo. Meanwhile, I hate Yago so much already. He's such a Joffrey :") :") I'm intrigued to see more of 2Face, because right now she's a tough, take-no-bullshit half-Asian girl and I'm into it.
• The diversity in general is good. Applegrant have always been pretty great on this front. Mo is Hispanic, Yago is also mixed-race (half black), Tamara is black, and there's a throwaway mention of a trans great-aunt too -- which I only mention because I feel like it rarely comes up in novels even as throwaay lines.
---
Anyway, there's not all that much to get into yet with this series, but we'll see where it goes. For now, this is an exciting start, in which some really dire shit happens. Like, this book is really dark! Applegate's progression & maturation of content across her YA series is also interesting to watch -- in fact, when I first started Remnants as a teenager, it actually disturbed me so much that I had nightmares and wasn't able to continue. We'll see how I tackle it this time.
---
EDITED TO ADD, AFTER FINISHING THE SERIES: Is it worth it? Not really. Having gone through all 14 books of Remnants, I can report that it's really only valuable for a diehard Applegrant fan, and even then, it was a slog towards the end. Substitute it with Michael Grant's Gone series instead and call it a day; in Gone he explicitly corrects some of the mistakes made in this series, rounding out storylines that they weren't able to wrap up or fully address here. The first few books of Remnants are okay, the penultimate book is fantastic, but all of the rest are ghostwritten and just not... good... and sometimes even actively enraging, and the series ending is outright terrible.
The premise reminds me so much of the movie 2012 or the TV show The 100; this idea of global catastrophe necessitating a small group of survivors to move on and start anew elsewhere.
Random points:
• My favourite thing in book #1 might be the cyberpunk/sci fi/futuristic details. It's 2011 and yet we have self-driving cars, tiny 'links' (which are basically smartphones lbr), corporatisation of monuments, gene alteration and DNA modification, body modifications, a black female president, etc. I just really love these worldbuilding details! It's not super futuristic -- a lot of this stuff we have now, in 2016 -- but it's still slightly ahead of its time.
• Relatedly, the book makes me laugh a little because some of the characters' names are SO DATED and ridiculous. Jobs is fine, but Mo'Steel, 2Face, and D-Caf? I can't really take them seriously. But if you just think of it in context of Neuromancer, then these ridiculous nicknames fit right into that sort of genre.
• Characters: I like Jobs as a protagonist, but mostly I love his adrenaline fiend bff Mo because there are shades of Marco/Edilio in that character, imo. Meanwhile, I hate Yago so much already. He's such a Joffrey :") :") I'm intrigued to see more of 2Face, because right now she's a tough, take-no-bullshit half-Asian girl and I'm into it.
• The diversity in general is good. Applegrant have always been pretty great on this front. Mo is Hispanic, Yago is also mixed-race (half black), Tamara is black, and there's a throwaway mention of a trans great-aunt too -- which I only mention because I feel like it rarely comes up in novels even as throwaay lines.
---
Anyway, there's not all that much to get into yet with this series, but we'll see where it goes. For now, this is an exciting start, in which some really dire shit happens. Like, this book is really dark! Applegate's progression & maturation of content across her YA series is also interesting to watch -- in fact, when I first started Remnants as a teenager, it actually disturbed me so much that I had nightmares and wasn't able to continue. We'll see how I tackle it this time.
---
EDITED TO ADD, AFTER FINISHING THE SERIES: Is it worth it? Not really. Having gone through all 14 books of Remnants, I can report that it's really only valuable for a diehard Applegrant fan, and even then, it was a slog towards the end. Substitute it with Michael Grant's Gone series instead and call it a day; in Gone he explicitly corrects some of the mistakes made in this series, rounding out storylines that they weren't able to wrap up or fully address here. The first few books of Remnants are okay, the penultimate book is fantastic, but all of the rest are ghostwritten and just not... good... and sometimes even actively enraging, and the series ending is outright terrible.
March 23, 2017
Goodness but this series starts off with a gut punch. This is my second read of Remnants--I first read and mostly enjoyed the series when I was a wee high schooler, so I've forgotten a lot--but, like KA's other series, there are a lot of indelible moments in this one.
A sampling from book one (no spoilers): Cordelia in San Francisco. Lord, this scene wrecked me the first time I read it. This time around, I'd forgotten what happens, but at the first mention of her name I went bolt upright and cursed for about a minute as it came rushing back to me.
The fight aboard the shuttle. Really captures the simultaneous tension and absurdity of fighting in zero gee.
The impact. Oh my God, the impact.
KA doesn't pull any punches in this book, and from what I remember the rest of the series is similarly merciless. While I don't have the same fierce loyalty to the characters as I did in Animorphs--in part, I think, b/c the third person, rotating narration makes it harder to immediately connect--they're all well drawn so far and, to her credit, don't fall into the same roles as the Animorphs kids (which was a slight problem I had with Everworld's cast).
Now, off to read #2. :)
A sampling from book one (no spoilers): Cordelia in San Francisco. Lord, this scene wrecked me the first time I read it. This time around, I'd forgotten what happens, but at the first mention of her name I went bolt upright and cursed for about a minute as it came rushing back to me.
The fight aboard the shuttle. Really captures the simultaneous tension and absurdity of fighting in zero gee.
The impact. Oh my God, the impact.
KA doesn't pull any punches in this book, and from what I remember the rest of the series is similarly merciless. While I don't have the same fierce loyalty to the characters as I did in Animorphs--in part, I think, b/c the third person, rotating narration makes it harder to immediately connect--they're all well drawn so far and, to her credit, don't fall into the same roles as the Animorphs kids (which was a slight problem I had with Everworld's cast).
Now, off to read #2. :)
February 23, 2017
Edited: 23, February 2017
I remember that this book had some humor in it, so that is why I gave it 2 stars the last time. But as the years have passed, I don't remember a damn thing about this very very short book, and so after seeing it again, I had to fix that. All I know for a fact was that I don't know how I even finished this "book" it was so lagging in the story and very childish. Sure, there were parts that I laughed out loud about, but I have no idea what I just read. Really.
So, I give it 1 star, I did not like it. This book could be for you though, who knows. Not bashing anything or anyone here, especially the author! This book was just not for me, that is all. Maybe I read it at the wrong time, who knows? But this is my opinion.
If you like apocalyptic anything for very young readers, here you go! :) Hope you enjoy it more than I did!
I remember that this book had some humor in it, so that is why I gave it 2 stars the last time. But as the years have passed, I don't remember a damn thing about this very very short book, and so after seeing it again, I had to fix that. All I know for a fact was that I don't know how I even finished this "book" it was so lagging in the story and very childish. Sure, there were parts that I laughed out loud about, but I have no idea what I just read. Really.
So, I give it 1 star, I did not like it. This book could be for you though, who knows. Not bashing anything or anyone here, especially the author! This book was just not for me, that is all. Maybe I read it at the wrong time, who knows? But this is my opinion.
If you like apocalyptic anything for very young readers, here you go! :) Hope you enjoy it more than I did!
December 12, 2015
The book "Remnants" by K. A. Applegate is a thrilling science fiction novel. The main character, Jobs, is a teenage boy who is one of eighty selected to leave Earth when a asteroid threatens to strike and possibly destroy the world. Jobs tells Mo, his best friend, "there's an asteroid that is going to hit earth. I don't want to ruin your day, but it kind of looks like the world is going to end" (19). Mo's response is very calm about this information but later in the book as their fears become a reality, Cordelia, a previous girlfriend of Jobs, response is much more emotional. Cordelia gasps "Oh my God, all those people" when she learns a million died in less than five seconds (91). Emotions run wild with Cordelia and many other characters, as their futures are unknown, until catastrophe hits. This is an action packed thriller that will keep you wanting more
January 27, 2009
I finally finished this 14 book sci fic series after starting it years ago. Apocalyptic saga where 80 people board a ramped up space shuttle equipped with artificial hibernation pods and blast off hours before an asteroid strikes Earth. 500 years later, the shuttle is picked up by an ancient alien spaceship. The survivors eventually head back to Earth, and start rebuilding civilization from near scratch. Aimed at young adults, written by Animorphs author Katherine Applegate, the series still kept me interested.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2008
This is such a thrilling book! I love it 100%! It was hard for me to ever put this book down but now I've finally finished it. I highly recommend it to those who like suspense and action. You'll get so into it once you want to find out what happens to the earth when the asteroid comes and certain characters as well.
July 10, 2007
Better than her previous series, Animorphs, this is a solid sci-fi intro to a new world. Modern, believable protagonists are thrown into an interesting situation, and I enjoy her vision of the world in 10 years.
July 13, 2016
First off, I guess having a person on the cover with a tube sticking out of their mouth is not nearly as visually palatable as two tubes coming out of the head…
That aside, The Mayflower Project is mostly setting up the Remnants series, putting down all of our different players and setting them up for the rest of the series. Jobs, the programming whiz kid and probably leader-type; Mo’Steel, the reckless adventurer; 2Face, the girl with the face showing the uncertainty of life; Yago, the power-hungry twisted teen; Billy, the Seer; D-Caf the empathic follower; Tamara, the unplanned Marine. With the exception of the last, all of the others mentioned above are teenagers, keeping with Ms. Applegate’s late 90s/early 2000s tendency to have teenage protagonists find themselves in situations far deeper and more dark than they may be ready to handle, but will have to rise to the occasion or die in the process. I am really interested to see the different roles all of the above characters will take as this series unfolds, and who else might also end up playing a role though we may not have met them yet.
There were a lot of characters and elements to juggle in this book, and therefore there was also a lot of point of view shifting. It was always in the third-person semi-omniscient voice (correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve never quite gotten the different pov names completely straight –serves me right for going for a foreign languages degree instead of an English degree, haha), where we are basically looking over the shoulder of one character at a time and listening in on their thought processes concurrently with seeing what is going on around them. This flexibility in the pov worked well, and since names and references to each individual’s situations were mentioned so often, it was never hard to determine who we were following next within a few sentences at most. Especially when so many of them took on strange nicknames – what a weird way to conceptualize a decade in the future! (Especially since that year – 2011 – has already passed.)
All of this setup means that this book does not feel as much like a round novel, though it certainly does have a climax and a sort-of resolution; the thing is, the elements this book achieves were all accomplished (in their own ways) in order to provide a scene setup for the rest of the series: This book is a setup. It seemed to me to accomplish what it sets out to do – give us the rundown on the characters and the inciting event of the story, and get us interested in what is to come. That being the case, the overall resolution/end of the book is more like we’ve just put the cake in the oven and we need to wait to the next book to watch it really start cooking and rising before it is all done baking by the end of the series (I hope).
3 stars because The Mayflower Project peaked my interest and I want to know what happens next, though quality of the story as a whole (as a book, first book in a series, as a complete story with just enough of a cliffhanger/temptation at the end to continue on) is probably closer to a 2. It’s not bad, it’s not like it is really sloppy, but it is rough around the edges and does not do very well as a standalone even within a larger series; it left me too desirous for more, more information, more progress. I think it might have been better to have it rolled into the next book for a larger start to the series, to help balance it out. But, alas, many small books was the fashion du jour at the time of publication, especially coming off Ms. Applegate’s other series Animorphs and Everworld.
Quotes and commentary:
[Mark said,] “Everyone’s doomed, brother. Everyone’s death warrant is signed, sealed, and waiting to be delivered. So killing…I mean, it wouldn’t be killing in a normal way. And I still have Dad’s old gun.” – page 27 – This made me pause in my reading, thinking about the implications Mark’s decision would have on him, the mark it would leave on his soul, and how it would change him irrevocably once they made it safely onto the shuttle. I wondered if he would become one of the antagonists as the series progressed.
Then it was across the yard, climb the rose trellis to the roof of the house, over to the far side, out onto that attached garage, a jump onto an RV parked in the driveway, and a heart-stopping leap that took them over a picket fence. – page 45 – Parkour became popularized in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and Mo’Steel is clearly a big participant in it. (Reference: Wikipedia)
She had a pair of screens doing slow-dissolves of pix. Pix she must have taken herself […] – page 49 – Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have an appearance time on the market for digital photo frames, but I did find an article which offers some history: Digital Frame 8 article, though I don’t know how reliable it is (there are enough typos alone to raise concern.) There is also this article, Digital Photo Frames History from a site called 3wisemonkeys, which sounds marginally more reliable, though it does not quite give years. There is also this blog where the writer mentions he bought his first digital picture frame in 1999. It’s interesting to see what people thought the short-term future would be like in the early 2000s, based on what had already been invented, and creating a future lingo (pix, woolly, etc.)
He popped a blank disc […] into the drive and copied the files. – page 50 – Yet, they are still using discs in computers. Presumably CDs, but might even be floppy disks – the wording is open to interpretation. Out of curiosity, I went to find out when USB flash drives were first sold and found it was around late 2000, shortly before this book was published. Source: USB flash drive on Wikipedia.
[2Face’s] existence forced people to confront the uncertainty of life. – page 55 – Simple, profound. I’m waiting (and hoping) to see these little bits become themes as this series progresses.
The kiss had meant everything to him when it lived only in memory. He should not have had to see it again. He should not have had to share it with a stranger. It should not have been electronically stored data. – page 64-65 – This can bring up an interesting conversation, one which we have off and on today, about what is okay to share on the internet, and how much is too much sharing.
[Yago] was tall and powerfully built. He had his dad’s Caucasian, male-model features and his mother’s African-American skin coloration. – page 76 -- Yago’s mom is also the president of the US in 2011 – so KAA got who could be president half-right either way, with Barack Obama as president, or if Hillary Clinton had won instead.
Mo’Steel said, “Everyone always dies, man. Always been that way. And I don’t think it ever did have a point. Did it?” – page 85 – My one Animorphs reference I’ll allow myself for this review: “Did I… did I make a difference? […] ” I would be curious to see if this theme about the value of life, the difference one person can make, will play a role in this series. I would hope so, considering the nature of the Mayflower Project and the small number of people involved in it.
It was [Cordelia’s] great-aunt Rebecca (formerly great-uncle Robert). – page 89 – An early nod to transgender people, and one which is not hidden nor merely alluded to.
That aside, The Mayflower Project is mostly setting up the Remnants series, putting down all of our different players and setting them up for the rest of the series. Jobs, the programming whiz kid and probably leader-type; Mo’Steel, the reckless adventurer; 2Face, the girl with the face showing the uncertainty of life; Yago, the power-hungry twisted teen; Billy, the Seer; D-Caf the empathic follower; Tamara, the unplanned Marine. With the exception of the last, all of the others mentioned above are teenagers, keeping with Ms. Applegate’s late 90s/early 2000s tendency to have teenage protagonists find themselves in situations far deeper and more dark than they may be ready to handle, but will have to rise to the occasion or die in the process. I am really interested to see the different roles all of the above characters will take as this series unfolds, and who else might also end up playing a role though we may not have met them yet.
There were a lot of characters and elements to juggle in this book, and therefore there was also a lot of point of view shifting. It was always in the third-person semi-omniscient voice (correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve never quite gotten the different pov names completely straight –serves me right for going for a foreign languages degree instead of an English degree, haha), where we are basically looking over the shoulder of one character at a time and listening in on their thought processes concurrently with seeing what is going on around them. This flexibility in the pov worked well, and since names and references to each individual’s situations were mentioned so often, it was never hard to determine who we were following next within a few sentences at most. Especially when so many of them took on strange nicknames – what a weird way to conceptualize a decade in the future! (Especially since that year – 2011 – has already passed.)
All of this setup means that this book does not feel as much like a round novel, though it certainly does have a climax and a sort-of resolution; the thing is, the elements this book achieves were all accomplished (in their own ways) in order to provide a scene setup for the rest of the series: This book is a setup. It seemed to me to accomplish what it sets out to do – give us the rundown on the characters and the inciting event of the story, and get us interested in what is to come. That being the case, the overall resolution/end of the book is more like we’ve just put the cake in the oven and we need to wait to the next book to watch it really start cooking and rising before it is all done baking by the end of the series (I hope).
3 stars because The Mayflower Project peaked my interest and I want to know what happens next, though quality of the story as a whole (as a book, first book in a series, as a complete story with just enough of a cliffhanger/temptation at the end to continue on) is probably closer to a 2. It’s not bad, it’s not like it is really sloppy, but it is rough around the edges and does not do very well as a standalone even within a larger series; it left me too desirous for more, more information, more progress. I think it might have been better to have it rolled into the next book for a larger start to the series, to help balance it out. But, alas, many small books was the fashion du jour at the time of publication, especially coming off Ms. Applegate’s other series Animorphs and Everworld.
Quotes and commentary:
[Mark said,] “Everyone’s doomed, brother. Everyone’s death warrant is signed, sealed, and waiting to be delivered. So killing…I mean, it wouldn’t be killing in a normal way. And I still have Dad’s old gun.” – page 27 – This made me pause in my reading, thinking about the implications Mark’s decision would have on him, the mark it would leave on his soul, and how it would change him irrevocably once they made it safely onto the shuttle. I wondered if he would become one of the antagonists as the series progressed.
Then it was across the yard, climb the rose trellis to the roof of the house, over to the far side, out onto that attached garage, a jump onto an RV parked in the driveway, and a heart-stopping leap that took them over a picket fence. – page 45 – Parkour became popularized in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and Mo’Steel is clearly a big participant in it. (Reference: Wikipedia)
She had a pair of screens doing slow-dissolves of pix. Pix she must have taken herself […] – page 49 – Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have an appearance time on the market for digital photo frames, but I did find an article which offers some history: Digital Frame 8 article, though I don’t know how reliable it is (there are enough typos alone to raise concern.) There is also this article, Digital Photo Frames History from a site called 3wisemonkeys, which sounds marginally more reliable, though it does not quite give years. There is also this blog where the writer mentions he bought his first digital picture frame in 1999. It’s interesting to see what people thought the short-term future would be like in the early 2000s, based on what had already been invented, and creating a future lingo (pix, woolly, etc.)
He popped a blank disc […] into the drive and copied the files. – page 50 – Yet, they are still using discs in computers. Presumably CDs, but might even be floppy disks – the wording is open to interpretation. Out of curiosity, I went to find out when USB flash drives were first sold and found it was around late 2000, shortly before this book was published. Source: USB flash drive on Wikipedia.
[2Face’s] existence forced people to confront the uncertainty of life. – page 55 – Simple, profound. I’m waiting (and hoping) to see these little bits become themes as this series progresses.
The kiss had meant everything to him when it lived only in memory. He should not have had to see it again. He should not have had to share it with a stranger. It should not have been electronically stored data. – page 64-65 – This can bring up an interesting conversation, one which we have off and on today, about what is okay to share on the internet, and how much is too much sharing.
[Yago] was tall and powerfully built. He had his dad’s Caucasian, male-model features and his mother’s African-American skin coloration. – page 76 -- Yago’s mom is also the president of the US in 2011 – so KAA got who could be president half-right either way, with Barack Obama as president, or if Hillary Clinton had won instead.
Mo’Steel said, “Everyone always dies, man. Always been that way. And I don’t think it ever did have a point. Did it?” – page 85 – My one Animorphs reference I’ll allow myself for this review: “Did I… did I make a difference? […] ” I would be curious to see if this theme about the value of life, the difference one person can make, will play a role in this series. I would hope so, considering the nature of the Mayflower Project and the small number of people involved in it.
It was [Cordelia’s] great-aunt Rebecca (formerly great-uncle Robert). – page 89 – An early nod to transgender people, and one which is not hidden nor merely alluded to.
May 24, 2019
I decided to read this after rereading all of Animorphs. I had already read Everworld, and I wanted more of K. A. Applegate's writing without rereading that (because it was Rough).
The whole series is... decidedly less interesting than Animorphs. The characters in it feel pretty same-y, even after fourteen whole books. The ones I found most interesting or thought had the most potential either died quickly or were skimmed over. The others all felt like, if they had distinguishable personalities, they were dialed FAR down. Overall, I wasn't a big fan of it.
That being said, this book is one of the best in the series. It's SUPER depressing, but I loved that about it. The tone set here is utterly devastating. The gore wasn't the most disturbing thing for once - instead, the descriptions of the way the NASA employees behaved and the way everyone interacted set a palpable tone of dread and horror. I LOVED that! Granted, it made me super sad and I had to go watch a bunch of cheerful cartoons in order to recuperate, but the tone this book sets in the last few chapters honestly outclasses most of everything from either Everworld or Animorphs in my opinion. That's high praise, given that the rest of the series isn't quite as good as either. (Well, okay, it might be better than Everworld.)
Overall, I would 100% recommend reading this book for the last few chapters if you want to cry. Otherwise, I think it's not really worth reading, and I certainly wouldn't recommend the rest of the series.
The whole series is... decidedly less interesting than Animorphs. The characters in it feel pretty same-y, even after fourteen whole books. The ones I found most interesting or thought had the most potential either died quickly or were skimmed over. The others all felt like, if they had distinguishable personalities, they were dialed FAR down. Overall, I wasn't a big fan of it.
That being said, this book is one of the best in the series. It's SUPER depressing, but I loved that about it. The tone set here is utterly devastating. The gore wasn't the most disturbing thing for once - instead, the descriptions of the way the NASA employees behaved and the way everyone interacted set a palpable tone of dread and horror. I LOVED that! Granted, it made me super sad and I had to go watch a bunch of cheerful cartoons in order to recuperate, but the tone this book sets in the last few chapters honestly outclasses most of everything from either Everworld or Animorphs in my opinion. That's high praise, given that the rest of the series isn't quite as good as either. (Well, okay, it might be better than Everworld.)
Overall, I would 100% recommend reading this book for the last few chapters if you want to cry. Otherwise, I think it's not really worth reading, and I certainly wouldn't recommend the rest of the series.
Read
February 21, 2020I had to add a new shelf in honor of this one, "books that traumatized me".
Anyway, in my review of the Animorphs series, I mentioned that my elementary school library had a system where books that were too mature for the little ones were marked with a red sticker and couldn't be checked out if you were under a certain age. Once you moved into (I think?) fourth grade, you could check out the books with the red sticker.
This was the first book I ever checked out once I reached that milestone, purely on the basis of my having liked Animorphs and it was by the same author. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
After reading about half of the first book in the series, I suffered from nightmares. The descriptions of the black snakelike tubes being forced down people's throats as they were placed in hibernation, the violent destruction of the Earth which killed billions of people, the pregnant woman who was haphazardly placed in hibernation at the last minute and wound up giving birth to a deformed child when they were revived decades or centuries later - all of it fucking horrified my nine year old brain.
Looking back, I think I did try to read some of the other books, or maybe I just looked at the writeups on the back. As I recall, it gets kind of silly as it goes along, including aliens (?) and the new generations of humans born on the new planet being these weird evolved beings with duck feet and telepathic powers, or some stupid shit like that. So I don't think I missed much by not continuing to subject myself to more nightmare fuel.
Anyway, in my review of the Animorphs series, I mentioned that my elementary school library had a system where books that were too mature for the little ones were marked with a red sticker and couldn't be checked out if you were under a certain age. Once you moved into (I think?) fourth grade, you could check out the books with the red sticker.
This was the first book I ever checked out once I reached that milestone, purely on the basis of my having liked Animorphs and it was by the same author. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
After reading about half of the first book in the series, I suffered from nightmares. The descriptions of the black snakelike tubes being forced down people's throats as they were placed in hibernation, the violent destruction of the Earth which killed billions of people, the pregnant woman who was haphazardly placed in hibernation at the last minute and wound up giving birth to a deformed child when they were revived decades or centuries later - all of it fucking horrified my nine year old brain.
Looking back, I think I did try to read some of the other books, or maybe I just looked at the writeups on the back. As I recall, it gets kind of silly as it goes along, including aliens (?) and the new generations of humans born on the new planet being these weird evolved beings with duck feet and telepathic powers, or some stupid shit like that. So I don't think I missed much by not continuing to subject myself to more nightmare fuel.
July 11, 2018
Spoilers!
I had heard of these book series years ago when I was still a teenager. Back then I was too scared to read them. I myself hate and gets really scared by disaster movies so this book reminded me too much of Armageddon. I recently got interested in apocalyptic dystopias in the YA section, so I decided to give this a try. It was quite depressing. We are introduced to the characters so fast and it is established that the year is 2011. It’s funny considering that this book was published in 2001-2002? The technology is interestingly described also considering that this book predates iphones and social media. The teenagers should have those but instead they have other things. It’s very scary to realize in the story that the government does everything to block the story of impeding doom. Would they really do that in real life? I understand that it’s to prevent panic and chaos. Would the government really be able to cover such a story especially with so many leaks and social media? The scene where Cordelia tragically dies as she’s filming her cousin’s wedding and the destruction of San Francisco from a small fragment of the asteroid is extremely similar to Facebook livestreaming. Her footage is released and everyone knows. Which is exactly how news get around now. The fact that the government did not anticipate and prepare all those years for a cataclysm of this scale, is frighteningly real in today’s society especially with how Trump is using the country’s money. Can the ‘space force’ blow up asteroids instead of ‘Space ISIS’? The way the earth is destroyed does not feel very scientifically real. Wouldn’t it just blow up? I feel that this story feels so adult-themed that the author should have written another version, even longer. I feel more details need to be added, the story felt too short. If it were to be rewritten it would feel like the film ‘2012’ just with the part of an ‘ark’ being built for space travel with some animals and a maximum number of humans inside. I’m curious to read the next one.
I had heard of these book series years ago when I was still a teenager. Back then I was too scared to read them. I myself hate and gets really scared by disaster movies so this book reminded me too much of Armageddon. I recently got interested in apocalyptic dystopias in the YA section, so I decided to give this a try. It was quite depressing. We are introduced to the characters so fast and it is established that the year is 2011. It’s funny considering that this book was published in 2001-2002? The technology is interestingly described also considering that this book predates iphones and social media. The teenagers should have those but instead they have other things. It’s very scary to realize in the story that the government does everything to block the story of impeding doom. Would they really do that in real life? I understand that it’s to prevent panic and chaos. Would the government really be able to cover such a story especially with so many leaks and social media? The scene where Cordelia tragically dies as she’s filming her cousin’s wedding and the destruction of San Francisco from a small fragment of the asteroid is extremely similar to Facebook livestreaming. Her footage is released and everyone knows. Which is exactly how news get around now. The fact that the government did not anticipate and prepare all those years for a cataclysm of this scale, is frighteningly real in today’s society especially with how Trump is using the country’s money. Can the ‘space force’ blow up asteroids instead of ‘Space ISIS’? The way the earth is destroyed does not feel very scientifically real. Wouldn’t it just blow up? I feel that this story feels so adult-themed that the author should have written another version, even longer. I feel more details need to be added, the story felt too short. If it were to be rewritten it would feel like the film ‘2012’ just with the part of an ‘ark’ being built for space travel with some animals and a maximum number of humans inside. I’m curious to read the next one.
November 15, 2017
Remnants, the least-discussed of the Applegrant projects—I remember, fifteen years ago, reading most of this first book, seeing the others at the library, and never actually getting around to checking them out.
Not a whole lot happens in this first book. Some characters get introduced, and then we get to watch as the planet Earth is destroyed and everyone on it dies. (I suppose that's technically a spoiler, but no one reading this should be surprised. If I'm remembering correctly, the last Animorphs book went ahead and printed the last chapter of this book as a preview. Earth is doomed.) Rating is rounded up to 3 stars from 2.5. It's not bad. It's brief and there's enough disaster that it can't be called boring. But, well, not a whole lot happens.
Not a whole lot happens in this first book. Some characters get introduced, and then we get to watch as the planet Earth is destroyed and everyone on it dies. (I suppose that's technically a spoiler, but no one reading this should be surprised. If I'm remembering correctly, the last Animorphs book went ahead and printed the last chapter of this book as a preview. Earth is doomed.) Rating is rounded up to 3 stars from 2.5. It's not bad. It's brief and there's enough disaster that it can't be called boring. But, well, not a whole lot happens.
September 12, 2024
I gotta say that I do not remember this book being quite so brutal. Not complaining, just damn. Ms. Applegate does not believe in plot armor, lmao.
I love an apocalyptic book and loved this series as a teen. We follow the Earth in its last days due to an impending meteor strike. A last ditch effort to save a very small subset of humans, aptly named The Mayflower, sets off into space. It includes multiple POVs of teens involved with this shuttle.
The characters are quite archetypal but I'm willing to (re)see how this plays out. For a book written in 2001, it doesn't age too badly. The references aren't plentiful so you do feel it is set in the future, though their "future" is 2011.
Cant wait to read more.
I love an apocalyptic book and loved this series as a teen. We follow the Earth in its last days due to an impending meteor strike. A last ditch effort to save a very small subset of humans, aptly named The Mayflower, sets off into space. It includes multiple POVs of teens involved with this shuttle.
The characters are quite archetypal but I'm willing to (re)see how this plays out. For a book written in 2001, it doesn't age too badly. The references aren't plentiful so you do feel it is set in the future, though their "future" is 2011.
Cant wait to read more.
August 13, 2025
Probably the most effective prologue in a book I’ve ever experienced, and barely a page and a half!
I remember reading this series when I was in school years ago, and tho the details were foggy I knew the experience stuck with me and I have been desperate to find these and read them again.
Definitely not meant for kids, and probably Appegates most mature and challenging work as a series. The stakes are immediately recognizable and unavoidable, and as a first book it does a great job of setting the tone and inevitability of events: what does the world do when it it has no chance to grieve? It denies, it lies, it scrambles, it rages, and ultimately suffers.
Remnants is not about survival; as a character in the next book says, it’s about being worthy of it.
I remember reading this series when I was in school years ago, and tho the details were foggy I knew the experience stuck with me and I have been desperate to find these and read them again.
Definitely not meant for kids, and probably Appegates most mature and challenging work as a series. The stakes are immediately recognizable and unavoidable, and as a first book it does a great job of setting the tone and inevitability of events: what does the world do when it it has no chance to grieve? It denies, it lies, it scrambles, it rages, and ultimately suffers.
Remnants is not about survival; as a character in the next book says, it’s about being worthy of it.
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