** spoiler alert ** 
 Okay, so part of my struggle with the first book in this series was just figuring out what kind of book I was reading. I'd been thinking coming-of-age, but the magic (yara) aspect threw me for a loop in After the End, as I wasn't sure if I was supposed to think it was all brainwashing from her cultish upbringing or real magic. Well, right at the beginning, the yara saves Miles' life, so it must be real. Having gotten that straight in my mind, I was able to read and enjoy this one more easily. With that said, I understand why the first book had Miles and the reader questioning Juneau's magical abilities. It's a book about questioning everything you know. I just found this particular issue (magic/science/practical immortality) handled more to my taste in Origin. Plum tantalizes lots of questions we could be asking about a medication that gives limited immortality--who do we give it to? How do we deal with overpopulation? What is our ethical responsibility, knowing there is so much pain, sickness, and dying in the world that this drug could potentially help fix? There's no time to really buckle down and consider them, though, because the action keeps on apace. This one would be fun to read with a book club so that we could flesh out some of those issues. 
 With Miles taking the magic meds, the romantic playing field was leveled more in this one, and that fixed one of my complaints with book one (because I dislike highly skewed relationships, when one is essentially a superhero and the other is lamer than average). I loved that they were able to work together in the end, and I found the ending satisfying.