The Interesting Topics in The Final Six

            Humans are dangerous weapons. Earth, the planet once thriving with life and the home of humanity has crumbled down into a wasteland. Every day, Earth’s natural catastrophes take the lives of far too many people. All this is caused by intelligence for too complex for their own good: the intelligence of humans. The only viable option left for humanity’s survival is on Europa. The Final Six, the first in a two-part series written by Alexandra Monir, describes the lives of two of the 24 selected nominees to take the mission to Europa. Due to the condition of Earth, the nominees are forced into the mission program. They must train in a specialized training facility where they will develop the skills necessary to navigate their ship to Europa and then survive Europa’s environment. However, some of the nominees find more than they bargained for. In the end, there can only be six people remaining to make the final trip to Europa.

            The book is narrated by two different people, Naomi and Leo, separated by chapters. At the start, Naomi has every intention to find out the secrets of the mission, while Leo is overjoyed to have become part of the nominated 24. Naomi still has a living family while Leo has firsthand watched his family die due to the Earth’s catastrophes. So, Naomi has no intention of leaving Earth, while Leo believes Europa is the only future for him. As the story progresses, Naomi uses her specialty as a scientist to hack into robots or analyze bacteria to sabotage the mission while Leo starts to help Naomi out, but still wants to stay on the mission because he has nothing to go home to.

The character development of Leo and Naomi is surprisingly great. At the start, we immediately see some sort of relationship between them. At first, they just like talking to each other. Then, Naomi starts try to find information confirming the mysteries of the mission, and Leo starts to become more suspicious of the mission himself and starts helping her. At some point, Leo voluntarily helps Naomi rather than having to be asked by her. After a while, Leo and Naomi confess their romantic feelings to each other, at which point Naomi starts to have reason to stay with Leo, who still wants to stay on the mission, which causes Naomi to also want to stay on the mission. Their relationship must be kept in secret however because romantic relationships would only hinder the mission to Europa, and so having others find out about their relationship would mean Leo losing his chance at staying on the mission.

The main antagonist is one of Leo and Naomi’s teammates: Beckett Wolfe. He is related to the president and is incredibly egotistic. This poses a challenge to Leo and Naomi because they are supposed to compete against each other to become part of the final six. For the most part, Beckett and Leo are the ones competing against each other as they are both swimmers/ divers. Once Leo shows his prowess, which exceeds Beckett’s, Beckett proceeds to use underhanded tactics in order to make Leo look worse in front of the mission admins. Leo eventually suffers from Beckett’s tactics, although delving into that topic would be a spoiler.

Throughout the story, one main mystery develops: the mystery of life on Europa. Ever since the start, Naomi has suspicions about the mission. She often goes on a site called the Space Conspirator where people argue about conspiracy theories. One of those theories is the theory of life on Europa, and Naomi believes it. As the story progresses, Naomi finds certain clues that there really might be something the mission admins are hiding. She starts dragging Leo into her attempts at finding information, and Leo starts to become more suspicious as well, although he still wants to stay on the mission. The mission admins then start to do psychological tests on the nominees in which some of the questions sound oddly specific. One of those questions asked them if their first instinct if they found life on Europa was to kill them, which heavily suggested that there was life on Europa. Near the end of the story, Naomi hacks an important computer containing a lot of information (not going to spoil it) and nearly confirms that there is indeed life on Europa.

Overall, I think this book is written very well. It has a space plot that I have never seen much of before, and the writing made sense, so I was able to understand everything. Each character excels at something beneficial to the Europa mission, so they are also all interesting to read about. The end of the book was the most interesting part of the book by far. Some of the mission admins have unexpected plans, and we also find out that the mission admins know a lot more about the nominees than they let on. And, after Leo suffers from Beckett’s tactics, he surprisingly gets a second chance from someone close to him. These plot twists at the end of the book were incredibly exciting to read about and none of them seemed to be overly unrealistic. The second book in the series is coming sometime in the future, and I will definitely read that when it comes out.