The first in Charlie Higson's new series starts with a bang, catapulting you straight into a nightmare world.
A year ago something happened. Everyone over the age of fourteen caught a mysterious new illness. The lucky ones died. The rest? Well, they're still around, hunting down the surviving kids in a desperate search for food.
The children who are left have come together to form gangs to help protect each other. But the adults – mothers and fathers, the children call them – are growing smarter, and the children's safehouses are being overrun. Rumours of a safe haven couldn't come at a better time...
The first scene – an attack by adults on a supermarket where children have been staying – is the perfect opener. All the important information is slipped in perfectly naturally; adults are bad, they hunt children, it's been like this for about the year, the kids aren't as safe as they used to be. It also starts one of the plotlines, as a captured child fights desperately to get back to his friends.
It's hard to put this book down once you've picked it up. The pressure almost never lets up, our heroes scrambling from one problem to the next. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but several of them die during the course of the story – no one is safe here, not the heroes, not the villains, not that new character who was just introduced or the one you've been reading about for two hundred pages.
Luckily the sequel is already out, but you'll have to wait a while for the third.
Ollie was walking alone by the lake. There were ducks on it, probably fish swimming down below. He felt neither happy nor sad. He was thoughtful. This all looked fantastic on the surface.
Franny had given him a small lettuce to try. It had tasted delicious, but when he'd pulled off one of the leaves he'd found a small slug on it.
There was always a slug on the lettuce.
This was too good to be true.
He had never trusted Jester, and he didn't trust David.
He wasn't going to let his guard down just yet.
Being careful had kept him alive this far.
There was no reason to stop being careful now.
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