Reviewed by Mrs. Foley
From Destiny Library record, "Five New York teenagers try to concentrate on their new band while the city suffers from a mysterious epidemic that is turning people into cannibals."

Not quite as good as the first book, Peeps, but very entertaining. Also interesting to music lovers is the fact that the title of each chapter is the name of a band. Westerfeld gives info on each band at the Author's Note. The characters from Peeps do play a role, but not until the last third of the book or so. Both books would be good for those students interested in reading more vampire fiction.

Review from Booklist (September 1, 2006 (Vol. 103, No. 1))
Something horrifying is bubbling up from the earth, and vampires stalk the streets of New York--but in this electric sequel to Peeps (2005), Moz and his buddy Zahler think only of forming a band. One night Moz, with the help of passerby Pearl, rescues a Fender Stratocaster guitar. Like Moz, Pearl is a musician, and a band is born. Soon the band recruits a singer, a Peep with her parasite mostly under control, and a drummer who literally sees the music and the terrifying things it attracts. Eventually itbecomes clear that the new band will play a key role in the coming struggle against the powerful evil. Westerfeld continues his captivating, original vision, improving it in this tightly plotted sequel. The new characters are engaging, and the breezy dialogue is graced with both unique slang and a touch of humor. Teen will savor the picture of a band finding its sound while saving the world. Both new readers and Peeps fans will eat this up. ( )

Reviewed by Long Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com

Set against the apocalyptic foreground first seen in PEEPS, THE LAST DAYS is a sequel to the former, and definitely does not disappoint.

Scott Westerfeld is one of the most consistently solid young adult novelists today and his latest only keeps the bar high and the readers happy. The Texas native is widely known for his innovative interpretations of "fantasy-esque" worlds and is the highly acclaimed author of THE MIDNIGHTERS and UGLIES trilogies.

THE LAST DAYS is a story based in contemporary New York City with a splash of dystopia tasting. Westerfeld takes on the always fun topic of vampires, and, as seen in PEEPS, revamping the whole legend behind the blood-thirsty immortals into his own super interesting view, basing the theory around "vampireism" as a disease similar, if not identical, to the Black Plague that ravaged the globe centuries before. Westerfeld delves more into a biological explanation, which involves carriers, kissing and biting, and a whole lot of rats.

It's summer, and New York City is going crazy. The temperature is much more intense than usual, even for summer; the sanitation is no longer under control (rats!); people are disappearing, afraid to travel on the subways; and Moz and Zahler are a two-man, kind of half-band. But soon their luck will change when they meet Pearl, a Juilliard music student, and her newly turned carrier friend Minerva. The four of them, along with street drummer Alana Ray, whose mental condition allows her to view farther into the depths than is advisable, join together to write music so epic, even they do not understand the magnitude of what is going to happen. Things are changing faster than you think.

So sit back, relax, and get ready to read these five teenager's soundtrack to the end of the world. It's going to be a good one. Masterfully written, old Westerfeld fans as well as new ones are sure to be blown away by the sheer raw sonic power of THE LAST DAYS. ( )

The Last Days is a twist on all vampire stories. It was a good sequel to Peeps, but not as good. The characters were all band memeber who dream of becomg rock stars together. But their dreams are side tracked as they must battle something evil lurking underground.

I like this book and recommend it to all music lovers and those who have read Peeps. ( )

While The Last Days is a sequel to Peeps, it does not quite pick up where the last one left off. Instead, we meet a new crew of characters, all of whom are struggling to make sense with how their city is changing. Music is what brings these characters together, not the struggle (set up in the first book and continued here), but they are drawn in none the less.

As is frequently the case, I didn't enjoy the sequel quite as much as the first book. There were more characters to focus on, so I feel like I didn't get to know each of them as well. That said, the plot and pacing are great and the ending is really satisfying.

Peeps and The Last Days are enjoyable books -- I recommend them both to teen and adult sci-fi/fantasy readers.

http://archthinking.blogspot.com/2009...

"Peeps" was a wonderful book - this sequel got on my nerves. It was too... not entirely working. It was a good book, don't get me wrong, but Westerfeld has had better days. ( )

Not nearly as good as its prequel, Peeps.

Told from alternating viewpoints, a musical prodigy, a genius guitarist, a "special needs" drummer and a peep form a band amidst a backdrop of urban decay and apocalyptic signs. There music is raw and real -- and more powerful than they could possibly imagine. The sequel to Peeps.

Moz (short for Mosquito) is walking home one night to see a crazed woman drop a vintage Stratocaster out of her bedroom window. This random event leads to 5 very different young people coming together to form a band. Pearl, a Julliard student, is the backbone of the band, the one who shapes the sound, and makes the raw power of Moz and his friend Zahler more than just random noise. She also brings in Minerva, a beautiful lead singer, whose recent illness has given her a taste for raw meat and an aversion to light and mirrors. They are joined by Alana Ray, a savant street drummer, who is able to see visions of the horrors the music might cause. As rats take control of the streets, and mysterious black water foams around the city, it becomes clear that the nameless band has an important role to play in the coming apocalypse.

Readers expecting a straight sequel to Peeps might be surprised by what they find here. While clearly set in the same universe, this book diverges wildly from the scientific romance formula that Peeps took. However, interesting characters and the musical hook should keep kids interested. Those who have read Peeps prior to this are in the interesting position of knowing more than the characters in the book, which can drag, but Westerfeld keeps the pace quick and the narrative tight. A personal quibble is that we don't get to find out more about Zahler or Alana Ray, while much time is spent on Minerva, who I didn't find all that interesting. All in all a nice, tight teen read with lots of appeal. (cross-posted from MeriJenBen) ( )

Underground evil

consumes city; this sequel's

as good as the first.

not nearly as good as the first. more teenagery. more about a band and less about vamps. ( )

Scott Westerfeld is arguably the master of modern-day sci-fi. His books, whether they are set in this present world, or in a future place, are always easy to relate to and understand. Even readers who have not read PEEPS (and you should) will enjoy this one.

THE LAST DAYS is essentially a story about five wannabe musicians getting together to form a band. There’s Pearl: musically talented, smart, rich, an entrepreneur, and a little bossy on the keyboard. There’s Moz, the talented but untrained guitarist who along with Pearl saves a rare Stratocaster guitar that a crazy woman was chucking out of her apartment window. Zahler is Moz’s best friend, guitarist turned bassist, who constantly feels as if he’s the band’s weak link and has a penchant for making up new words (fawesome!).

The threesome hire Alana Ray, a talented but neurotically challenged drummer who drums on paint buckets and can see what music looks like. And finally there’s Minerva, Pearl’s friend who was bitten by something and now exhibits vampirish and vaguely cannibalistic tendencies—but whose singing talent somehow connects the whole band together into something paranormal.

When the band rehearses, strange things happen. The ground beneath them rumbles, as if something is struggling to reach them from underground. Meanwhile, the infected Minerva develops a relationship with Moz, as the parasite inside of her tries to spread itself by making her horny and irresistible.

In their journey to find an agent and get signed up to a label, the still nameless band learn that there is something very powerful about their music, as it has a way of summoning up the human race’s greatest enemy from deep within the earth where they reside. Now, the five young men and women must use their musical and supernatural talents to help the peeps, infected humans who can control their vampirish tendencies and who were created to help save humanity. Together, they will summon and fight the enemies until nearly all are extinct. Until next time.

The world that Scott Westerfeld has created is creepily realistic. I got chills from reading this novel, and anything that moves me to such a reaction is extraordinary. ( )

Told from alternating viewpoints, a musical prodigy, a genius guitarist, a "special needs" drummer and a peep form a band amidst a backdrop of urban decay and apocalyptic signs. There music is raw and real -- and more powerful than they could possibly imagine. The sequel to Peeps.

Moz (short for Mosquito) is walking home one night to see a crazed woman drop a vintage Stratocaster out of her bedroom window. This random event leads to 5 very different young people coming together to form a band. Pearl, a Julliard student, is the backbone of the band, the one who shapes the sound, and makes the raw power of Moz and his friend Zahler more than just random noise. She also brings in Minerva, a beautiful lead singer, whose recent illness has given her a taste for raw meat and an aversion to light and mirrors. They are joined by Alana Ray, a savant street drummer, who is able to see visions of the horrors the music might cause. As rats take control of the streets, and mysterious black water foams around the city, it becomes clear that the nameless band has an important role to play in the coming apocalypse.

Readers expecting a straight sequel to Peeps might be surprised by what they find here. While clearly set in the same universe, this book diverges wildly from the scientific romance formula that Peeps took. However, interesting characters and the musical hook should keep kids interested. Those who have read Peeps prior to this are in the interesting position of knowing more than the characters in the book, which can drag, but Westerfeld keeps the pace quick and the narrative tight. A personal quibble is that we don't get to find out more about Zahler or Alana Ray, while much time is spent on Minerva, who I didn't find all that interesting. All in all a nice, tight teen read with lots of appeal. ( )

I know this book is a sequel, but I picked this title up at the book fair without reading the first. A rock band forms and harnesses the sound to summon underground beasts while dealing with the growing chaos and deteriorating in the world around them. An infection is spreading turning people into Peeps, vampire like creatures. The five different members of the band alternate narration duties within the chapters of the book. The characters were interesting and despite being a sequel, I was pretty much able to understand the book on its own. Although now I am curious about what happened in book one. ( )

Moz and Zahler have been playing guitar together for six years. One crazy, stifling night in New York City, a woman throws her stratocaster guitar-- and all her other posessions-- out her apartment window. Moz grabs for the guitar at the same time as Pearl, a gorgeous and-- he soon finds out-- incredibly musically talented teenager. Moz, Zahler and Pearl form a new band while the rest of the world seems to be falling apart around them. The subways seem to be alive, there are beasties under the city, and the rats and other spirits have taken over dark alleys. Told in the first person of each of the new band members on rotating chapters, this is a great stand-alone sequel to Peeps. Fast-paced, intense, and dark. A good companion to other high-school vampire type stories, such as Twilight. ( )

This is the sequel to Peeps which was a great vampire novel with a totally new spin (not that I will say what it is here since that would ruin the entire plot) This book takes off in the same world, but with a new cast of characters for the most part. It again deals with vamps in an entirely new way and brings to life music in a fascinating way that somehow also ties in with the vamps in a way that totally makes sense. A good, if not great, sequel to a fantastic YA book.

Great sequal to Peeps that stands completely alone! Just a few minor crossover characters. The story of a band that gets together and with their music they tame the vampiric plague sweeping America. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/a... ( )

Peeps and The Last Days by Scott Westerfield. I read a slew of his books and some are better than others. These two are good and include the same group of characters who are changing and maturing (in all too normal, messy, ways). I am not enthusiastic about so many of the vampire based books marketed to teens (especially girls) but I felt that this set was less about the sex and more about the relationships and setting up a good history. The characters are diverse and some of the plot ideas are intriguing.

This follows after Peeps, in which we found out about the breakout of vampirism and the reasons for it. It was nice to read a conlusion to those events but The Last Days did not interest me as much. I really enjoyed Peeps, but The Last Days left me feeling 'meh'. It revolves around a five-person high school rock band, alternating each character between chapters. And each character tells his chapter from the first person POV which left me disoriented at the start of each chapter. Otherwise, another quick and easy read by Westerfeld. ( )

Sequel to Peeps, this is a mysterious epidemic is taking over the city. In the midst of this, 5 teens are trying to form a band and get their sound out to the public. ( )

http://sedgeshaveedges.livejourn...

The Last Days is a sequal, of sorts, to Westerfeld's Peeps. I loved Peeps and I liked The Last Days, but I was ultimately disappointed by it, perhaps because what I really wanted out of it was more of the same, the continuation of Cal and Lace's stories, and The Last Days just isn't that book.

Peeps is a story about Cal, and about Lace, and about this disease that they're trying to understand, and the entire network of people attempting to control the parasites. The Last Days is a story about a band, and the five teenagers who form it, and it happens to take place during, well, a sort of apocalypse. The characters still have to deal with the parasite, and its effects, and their role in the fight against the parasite is more crucial than it initially seems, but it is still, all in all, a book about a band.

There are still many things that the book does well. Westerfeld distinguishes the voices of each of the protagonists very well, and their speech patterns sound like teenagers. (Chapters are told in the first person, from the anternating POVs of each member in the band.) I tend to dislike the use of a lot of colloquial phrases in stories about teenagers, because adult authors often fail to use them well, but the slang works here. The keyboardist, Pearl, says "lateral" every few sentences, and the bassist, Zahler, adds the letter f to the beginning of his exclamations -- "cool" becomes "fool," excellent becomes "fexcellent," "fawesome," etc. It sounds kind of annoying, and it is, but it's annoying in a way that rings true.

Quick notes on the characters: Moz and Zahler have been friends most of their lives, and have had a two man band for six years -- they both play guitar, although Zahler eventually moves to bass. Pearl is a wealthy, musically talented (she plays everything, apparently), Juliard-attending only child. Minerva is the singer; she's also parasite positive, and really damn annoying. Alana Ray is the drummer, although she plays paint buckets instead of drums, and she has an unnamed disability that causes her to have tremors and hallucinations. (I thought that it would play a bigger role than it eventually did, and I was kind of excited to find out more about her past.)

The story does, eventually, feature Cal and Lace, and we learn more of they've been doing since the end of Peeps -- but only from the POVs of other characters, and never with as much specificity as I would have liked. Plus, Westerfeld took away the short chapters about real parasites that I loved in Peeps. (It's learning, while you read!)

Ultimately, the problem with The Last Days is that it lacks the same focus and urgency of the last book. Because POV alternates between five characters, it never seems that we get to know them well enough to really care about what happens to them. (I liked Zahler and Alana Ray, had little interest in Moz and Pearl, and Minerva bugged the hell out of me.) And while Peeps is a book about fighting this disease, and the relationship between Cal and Lace is incidental, The Last Days is a story about a band, and the apocalypse is incidental. I just don't care as much about these kids forming a band -- probably ebcause I never had the urge to form a band as a teenager. The final wrap-up also doesn't quite work for me -- it explains too much and too little all at once.

It's a fine book, it's fast-paced and entertaining, and I still love the world in which the story takes place (although most of the world-building was done in Peeps), and I was happy to see Cal and Lace again. But I still miss the parasites.

Not as good as Peeps, not nearly as good. For me, a lot of Peeps's strength came from the science, and The Last Days throws all of that over. I mean, it's set in the same world, after the parasite has started spreading at a pandemic rate and the infrastructure has started to shut down, but it's not really about the science (or even the action) at all, it's mostly about the hassles of forming a band. Which is not really a topic that interests me, and the continuous descriptions of the music and the playing and the playing of the music, etc., from five different (but not that different) viewpoints, all got kind of overly precious and repetitive and made me really miss Cal... at least he *did* something other than bitch about rehersal space. I didn't really care for the whole "music is biology/will tame the savage beast/etc" metaphor, either - it certainly feels not as well thought-out as some of Westerfeld's other writings, more like he said "well, musicians are cool. How can i stick that into one of my books?" The connection to the vampire mythology just isn't there. Overall, it's not a bad book, exactly; Westerfeld can certainly write in a way that pulls you along through a story. It's just that I loved Peeps so much that this "sequel" was a major let-down - it could have been so much more, and better. ( )

I enjoyed Last days if I didn't think about it as a sequel to Peeps. I liked the dynamics of the band members..Pearl, Moz, Zahler, Minerva, and Alana Ray. I did like the alternating viewpoint chapters. The story was interesting, I just wanted to hear more about Night Watch from Cal and Lacey. ( )

This is a sort-of sequel to Peeps. Cal and Lacy are still working for the Night Watch, but we don't really see them again until the end of the book. The story begins when Moz and Pearl rescue a guitar falling from the sky. This chance encounter results in a new band that has an eery lead singer (sorta peep-ish) with the ability to summon evil from beneath the streets of New York City. The Night Watch returns to lead the fight at a rock concert to end all concerts! ( )

This was one of those books that made me dance with joy when I got it in on the library reserve shelf. Luckily I work with people who understand book lust, so they just humor me.

Last Days is a sequel to Peeps, the amazing vampire novel that combined vampirism with communicable diseases. This novel takes us further into the epidemic occuring in New York City where all sorts of people are becoming peeps and the society is beginning to crumble due to the epidemic. The situation is seen through the eyes of five teens, who form a band together in the middle of the chaos, looking to make themselves famous before the end of the world. Westerfeld's writing as always is fast-paced, enjoyable, and consuming. His characters are individuals who make mistakes, find themselves caught in world-changing situations, but remain true to themselves.

Recommend this to those kids who already love Westerfeld. For those who don't, make sure you start them on Peeps. Any kids who enjoy horror, apocalyptic fiction, or band fiction will love this. Don't you just adore books that sell themselves and get teens asking for more by the same author? And even better, Westerfeld has several series to get teens really hooked. ( )

Something strange is happening in New York City and all over the world. Garbage is piling up, dogs are running away from cats (and rats) and people are being bitten on the subway by other people. Despite all this a band is born, hoping to break into the big time before civilization breaks down and there is no one left to appreciate them.

For a sequel I found The Last Days to be as far apart from it's predecessor novel, Peeps, as it could be. That being said, I really enjoyed the story. That it's told from so many different perspectives would usually be confusing, but it seemed to work without too many misunderstandings (except at the very beginning when I thought Moz was a girl). This book was definately a stand alone and unique tale about the end of civilization as we know it, and the hopeful rebuilding in the aftermath. ( )