SKINJACKER TRILOGY by Neal Shusterman

Caught Between Life and Death.

The story began with a car collision, two teenagers were mortally injured.  Suddenly, they are walking towards an inviting light at the end of a very dark tunnel, but before they could reach it, they bumped into each other.  The next thing they knew was waking up in the forest with a strange-looking kid calmly smiling at them, pleased that they finally came around after nine months of deep slumber.

"It took nine months to get you born, so doesn't it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?” ― Everlost

The whole series is a journey through Shusterman’s version of what it was like after death. He took a step further from the common ghost stories to ghostly living -living the afterlife as an Afterlight. There were no limits to his creativity and imagination.  I was in awe of how he thought of every detail and work through all the complexities encountered in these books.  The visions he created behind the veil of the living were both strange and fantastic.

Likewise, with the characters, their divergence was astounding.  Each was fleshed out (pun not intended) endowed with a dominant characteristic, each with potentials and shortcomings, their contrast and purpose may tip the balance in the world called Everlost.

“Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.” ― Everwild

In spite of its complicated plot and characters, Shusterman managed to evade the big question –Is there a Heaven or a Hell?  There was no mention of any specific religious belief about the afterlife either. Simply, imagine a place where no one aged, but may lose all memories.  An afterlight may fall into an endless routine and forget about the completion of their journey.  But they have to keep moving or find themselves sinking into the earth. And the thought of going back home is the worst idea.

Scattered throughout the books are nuggets of wisdom –about life, love, pain, struggles, belief, and unbelief.  Some of them may sound funny and yet profound in the truer sense. Some of them are compelling.  Shusterman wrote an intricate story about how our choices make a difference. Overall, he didn’t write how death might be, but of how life should be.  A really wonderful trilogy.

“In short, there are mysteries of science and of soul that will never be understood no matter how hard we measure, no matter how strongly we believe, no matter how deep our think tanks and how high our aspirations. But as anyone will tell you—for we all know this within our hearts—the impossible happens and grand cosmic mysteries are solved on a regular basis, although most of the time the solutions lead to even greater mysteries.” ― Everfound

Book details:
Titles:  Everlost, Everwild, Everfound
Author:  Neal Shusterman
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Genre:  Children's Books, YA
Rating: ★★★★