Salvation

Salvation is the final book of the trilogy that began with Sanctuary and continued with Containment. Kenzie saved her group of friends from aliens attacking Earth, by borrowing a teleportation power and dumping them all on what appears to be an alien planet. The Omnistellar-hired soldiers who were chasing them because of their anomalous powers got pulled to the planet with them, and they have to decide to work together in order to survive and figure out how to get home.

In an abandoned city that seems remarkably Earth-like, they encounter a small group of refugees and learn that the entire planet was ravaged by the same aliens now attacking Earth. Worse, the aliens didn’t all leave. The refugees offer to help Kenzie’s group, but they have their own agenda. The promise of a spaceship that might get them back to Earth leads Kenzie and her friends on a possibly suicidal mission into an underground military bunker full of aliens. There is no spaceship: it turns out they didn’t travel through space but through dimensions and are on an alternate Earth, with no way to get home.

Kenzie’s team escapes and destroys the bunker, at great cost, but they manage to retrieve a piece of alien tech with “a backdoor into the alien network”. Kenzie borrows Rune’s power of merging with computers and plunges into the alien hive mind. What she learns about the origin and nature of the aliens allows the team to lead the giant central alien, the Karoch, to a missile silo, borrow its dimension-crossing power and then blow it up. They return to their version of Earth to find the attacking aliens all dead; Omnistellar reluctantly forgives their “crimes” in return for saving humanity.
This concluding installment of the high-stakes, high-adrenaline series has fewer chase scenes and more character development. The heart of the story is the team that has been forged among the teens who were once imprisoned for having superpowers and have now been through so much together that they know each others’ strengths and know how to rely on each other. Plenty of tension is provided by the puzzle of determining where exactly they are and the problem of how to trust the Omnistellar soldiers and whether to trust the refugees.

The second half of the book is less compelling than the first. Nix doesn’t pull her punches: the refugee leader, Eden, betrays Kenzie’s team and leaves them to die, and at two different times an important character sacrifices themself to save the others. But Eden and the refugees disappear from the narrative after having such an important role, leaving the story feeling unbalanced. The second moment of self-sacrifice has less impact because it’s too predictable. The aliens suffer from being too scary in the first two books: Nix attempts to top their menace by making a bigger, stronger, “big boss” alien, but it shows up only near the end and is defeated fairly quickly.

The narration is sometimes repetitive: Kenzie vows several times to “do whatever it takes” to save her friends. “We don’t trust Eden but we have no choice but to go along with her plan” is repeated often enough that her betrayal is hardly a surprise. And Kenzie’s emotions are analyzed at every opportunity, draining them of some of their power.

The action is exciting, the tension remains high throughout, and the characters and their relationships are well-developed and interesting. The concept of a found family is explored, and the camaraderie of the team is believable and engaging, making Salvation an enjoyable and satisfying conclusion to the series. A solid choice for teen sci-fi with some diverse characters.