Wow! A stunning conclusion to an excellent dystopian trilogy. I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone, but if you have read the first two books and haven’t gotten to this one yet, all I can say is:
Read It Now!! ( )

ABR's original State of Nature audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

I wasn't all that thrilled with this series when I started it. Everything was told by Aubrey, the main character, from his point of view. As I listened more I got deeper into the story. The comic antics of Jimmy and Junior were a nice break for the serious parts. I felt sorry for Aubrey when he put so much trust in Hannah only to be betrayed in the worst way.

In book 3, the last of the trilogy, the sub has returned from the trip to the Isle of Man. They find Hannah and after she gets the hand, she has them locked up. While they were gone she acquired "tunnel rats" to rebuild Eden. But now she has a problem. His people have gone on strike. If they can't go to Eden they will not send any shipments of supplies to the Park Service.

She makes a deal with Aubrey to go back and talk his people into resuming work. He must tell them that Eden is going to be better than ever. Aubrey won't go without Jimmy. The Professor puts a tracking anklet on Jimmy and tells them it will explode if they try to remove it or he can detonate it from there. If the shipments don't resume, Hannah stated that she will flood the city.

There are lessons to be learned from this series. A friendship forged through fire is the strongest. Jimmy and Aubrey's friendship had saved both their lives several times. They survived the murder of Jimmy's tribe and the destruction of the Isle of Man.

Though Aubrey thinks he loves Hannah, he learns that she manipulated him into thinking she cared for him. Her constant lies finally crushed any feelings he had for her. Now he does not trust anything she says but he knows he has to play along to save his people.

I really got into this series and hated that it would not continue. But I understood why Aubrey made the choice he did at the end.

Michael Braun finished up this third book in his wonderful voice. He carried the story along with consistent voices of the characters. I will watch for his name on other audio books.

Audiobook provided for for review by the author. ( )

I’m not even sure how to write a review for this final book in the trilogy. There’s really nothing I can say about the plot or the characters that wouldn’t spoil the fun of reading it for oneself. However, I’m not really feeling like “fun” is the right word at the moment. This series is probably a really bad choice for somebody who’s currently in search of something happy to read. The series has some happy and funny moments, but there is a lot of major tragedy throughout and some pretty gruesome depictions.

The ending could be considered happy… if you don’t read the epilogue, and if you can ignore the niggling knowledge in the back of your head that tells you what’s surely coming. From early on, I was pretty certain I knew what was coming. The events depicted in the epilogue were inevitable to anybody who remotely understood a certain character in the story. If nothing else, I suppose the author foreshadowed the epilogue when the main character muses, “I find myself hoping for a happy ending, but really it’s only a happy pause, because if you let any story play out long enough, they all end.” That bit stuck out to me when I read it because it’s something I’ve often thought myself, both about fictional stories and about real-life stories.

If things hadn’t turned out the way they did, it would have felt unrealistic and I probably would have complained about that. Still, I had become invested enough in the story and the characters that I hated the epilogue anyway. I like realism, but I also like it when a book or series ends on a happy note. In this case, it would have been impossible to have both. In any case, the ending wouldn’t have bothered me if I hadn’t really enjoyed the trilogy in the first place. It was very well-written and it sucked up way too much of my time over the past few days. I’m glad I started and finished it before my new university class started or else it would have been very hard to put it down and focus on my schoolwork. ( )