Scan by Walter Jury & Sarah Fine

Series: Scan (bk. 1)

Genera(s): Sci-fi Thriller

Subjects: aliens, adventure, science, secret societies, conspiracies 

Setting: New York City, New Jersey, Pennsylvania

POV/Tense: 1^st person POV, present tense: Tate Archer

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 329 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: Penguin: Putnam Children’s

Summary/ product description: “Tate and his father don’t exactly get along. As Tate sees it, his father has unreasonably high expectations for Tate to be the best—at everything. Tate finally learns what he’s being prepared for when he steals one of his dad’s odd tech inventions and mercenaries ambush the school, killing his father in the process and sending Tate on the run from aliens who look just like humans.

All Tate knows--like how to make weapons out of oranges and lighter fluid--may not be enough to save him as he’s plunged into a secret inter-species conflict that’s been going on for centuries. Aided only by his girlfriend and his estranged mother, with powerful enemies closing in on all sides, Tate races to puzzle out the secret behind his father’s invention and why so many are willing to kill for it. A riveting, fast-paced adventure, Scan is a clever alien thriller with muscle and heart.”

My Review: Aliens. They walk among us. They look just like us. They’re everywhere, and most of them think they’re human. Aliens invaded centuries ago and breed with the human population. The aliens are known as H2. There’s nothing to really differentiate them from us, but Tate discovered a piece of technology in his father’s lab that can. Tate wasn’t aware that humans were an endangered species or that aliens even existed.

I really liked the main character. Tate’s father has been training him in chemistry, languages and martial arts his whole life. Tate can make an explosive out of pretty much anything. He’s a genius and the author uses so much science terminology in the narration. I’m not sure how much of it’s for real, because there’s a lot of things you shouldn’t try to combine at home or you can burn your skin or pass out. I like that Tate’s like a teenage McGuiver, but with chemistry.

. It was kind of like The 5^th Wave because the aliens were hard to tell apart from the humans. This book isn’t dystopian in the traditional sense. It’s just that it’s like a parallel world in which we’re descended from aliens and there’s very few purely human people left. I find the more-aliens-than-humans thing improbable. If the aliens came 400 years ago and already 2/3 of the population are H2, then there had to be a lot of aliens breeding with people and they’d have to have prior knowledge to even get people to breed with them. Maybe 1000 years, but 400 year is not enough time for this population change. Maybe the black plague helped. The author doesn’t go deep into the history. We just know there are 50 purely human lineages that have a secret society.

This book was fun and action-packed. It’s a fast and easy read. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes sci-fi.  Fans of The 5^th Wave, Icons and I Am Number Four will enjoy Scan. Also if you liked Invasion, Obsidian or any alien books. It’s a book about aliens, but it’s different from the ones I mentioned. It’s more about conspiracies. Hope you enjoy it too!

Cover Art Review: I like the red laser rays and the Earth under it. The space ship is hard to make out. The title is metallic.