Review--Zero Repeat Forever by G.S. Prendergast

He has no voice, or name, only a rank, Eighth. He doesn’t know the details of the mission, only the directives that hum in his mind.

Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall.

His job is to protect his Offside. Let her do the shooting.

Until a human kills her…

Sixteen year-old Raven is at summer camp when the terrifying armored Nahx invade, annihilating entire cities, taking control of the Earth. Isolated in the wilderness, Raven and her friends have only a fragment of instruction from the human resistance.

Shelter in place.

Which seems like good advice at first. Stay put. Await rescue. Raven doesn’t like feeling helpless but what choice does she have?

Then a Nahx kills her boyfriend.

Thrown together in a violent, unfamiliar world, Eighth and Raven should feel only hate and fear. But when Raven is injured, and Eighth deserts his unit, their survival depends on trusting each other…

Holy. Cow. Zero Repeat Forever is a book that will take an effect on your feelings! It was one of the most impactful books I’ve read in a while! G.S. Prendergast really knows how to tell a marvelous and engaging tale! This one will grip you tight and not let go until its very end and all I can say is that I need a sequel asap!

This book is being likened to The 5th Wave and I totally see it now. Here we will follow Raven and Eighth. Raven is our human girl who gets caught up in a War of the Worlds type battle with her remaining friends and the aliens that have invaded their world. Though we never really use the term alien, but Nahx which was coined by a Russian gamer, so what it actually means I have no idea! These Nahx have come to Earth and are firing darts at people that essentially kill them, causing their blood to run a grayish color. Raven has just lost her boyfriend to one of these Nahx and their darts and is grieving, she vows to find the Nahx that killed him and return the favor.

Then we have who we know as Eighth and it becomes clear that he is one of these Nahx. The Nahx had always traveled in pairs and his “partner” was recently killed. Eighth is not quite normal when it comes to Nahx for when a chance encounter with Raven leaves her perfectly alive, well we know there’s just something different about this Nahx guy.

Raven and her friends are just trying to survive. Raven would like to try to find her parents who had been going on a vacation along the coast, there’s a chance they might be alive. But the group of camp counselors she was training with for a summer camp before all hell broke loose, decide it might be better to try to find more survivors and band together.

Then Raven gets seriously hurt and her rescuer turns out to be none other than Eighth. And this is when things start to take a turn. Whatever it’s for better or worse will soon be revealed.

Just wow. This book! I was not expecting to be so captivated by it! But pretty much from the moment I started it, I couldn’t put it down. The words were just flowing off the pages as I read and I soon found myself crossing beyond the halfway point in the first day and this is a 483 page book!

The relationship between Raven and Eighth was so complex. While all the other Nahx are firing these darts at humans with no prejudice on who that human is, Eighth doesn’t really want to dart anyone. True, he may have darted some before he crossed paths with Raven, but from the moment he first met her, saw her, he no longer wanted to continue his mission.

It’s hard to say whether this was something like romance or Stockholm Syndrome. While it seemed like Eighth might have been developing feelings he didn’t understand for Raven, Raven wasn’t necessarily falling head over heels for Eighth. In fact there were times when she flat out hated him. Then there were times when she thought she almost understood him. It was a tremulous bond that was forming between these two. I think it was almost sweeter that it wasn’t a more traditional romance.

The Nahx are all suited up while on Earth. Their body armor covers them from head to foot, so you really don’t even know who might be male or female or if they even have genders. They do apparently have genders and Eighth is a boy. His thought processes were a bit confusing…if that makes sense. He seemed to be somewhat intelligent, yet he was considered a failure as a Nahx and he’s not human, but he has very human ways of thinking. It was definitely an interesting piece of the puzzle that was the Nahx.

The ending…oh boy that ending! While I am in a fit of emotions as I’m reading the last two chapters, a lot of startling things come to fore. And then…my mind was blown! There are still many pertinent questions to be answered and I am leaning towards the idea that this might be a duology. There’s nothing online that I can find that verifies this, so it will be a mess of emotions as I await something concrete! But yes, this was basically one of the most amazing and incredible books I’ve read this year! If you’re looking for a story filled with adventure, suspense, a story that will leave you breathless, then be sure to pick up a copy of Zero Repeat Forever! This book is pure magic!


Overall Rating 5/5 stars