The Fear by Charlie Higson
Nov. 29th, 2011 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
He doesn’t know it, but DogNut is about to set off a chain of events that will affect every kid in the city.
The sickness struck everyone over the age of fourteen.
Mothers and fathers, older brothers, sisters and best friends. No one escaped its touch. And now children across London are being hunted by ferocious grown-ups …
They’re hungry.
They’re bloodthirsty.
And they aren’t giving up.
DogNut and the rest of his crew set out to find their lost friends on a deadly mission from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace and beyond, as the sickos lie in wait.
But who are their friends and who are the enemy in this changed world?
The kids from THE DEAD have settled in the Tower of London and while life isn’t perfect, it’s steady and relatively safe. But steady and safe aren’t enough for DogNut. Haunted by a kid’s death during a scavenging mission and aware that with Jordan, Ed and Kyle there’s little room for him to shine, he decides to look for those who escaped on the lorry when Lambeth Bridge fell. With the plain, big-boned Courtney and some kids looking for their siblings, he plans to row down the Thames, find the missing kids, hook up with the delectable Brooke and carve out a new life for himself.
But DogNut’s dreams of glory spark a chain of events that affects the Buckingham Palace kids and the kids forced to leave Morrisons and Waitrose in Camden, not least because the Sickos seem to be organising themselves under St George’s leadership …
The third in Charlie Higson’s powerful zombie-style series, THE FEAR’s effectively a second prequel to THE ENEMY. That’s my main frustration with it because effectively, 2 books on from THE ENEMY we still don’t really know what’s happening with the Morrisons/Waitrose kids or their storyline.
That said, I liked the cheeky DogNut whose heart is in the right place for all his outrageous self-aggrandisement and the romance between him and the insecure Courtney is sweetly played out. I also enjoyed finding out what happened to the kids on the lorry and Higson does a really believable job of showing how they’ve organised themselves in the Natural History Museum. A new character, Shadowman, is also introduced and I liked his survivalist, pragmatic attitude and his relationship with the duplicitous Jester.
There’s plenty of horror thanks to the Collector, a Sicko who likes to play with kids before killing them and Higson develops St George’s storyline, as he builds a Sicko army. There are some terrifying scenes in the book and Higson again doesn’t shy away from killing characters who the reader’s grown to love. Be warned that there’s a lot of bleakness in the ending, but also hope as events pick back up with the arrival of the Morrisons/Waitrose kids at Buckingham Palace.
There is much more of a sense of the overall story coming together and with the action promising to move back to the Tower of London in book 4, I can’t wait to see what happens next.
The Verdict:
The third in Charlie Higson’s excellent zombie-style series is another chilling and entertaining read with plenty of bleakness and dark humour. However, it is effectively another prequel to THE ENEMY, which I did find a little irritating given that it’s been so long since the events in that book and I’m keen to find out what happened to the Morrisons and Waitrose crews.
The sickness struck everyone over the age of fourteen.
Mothers and fathers, older brothers, sisters and best friends. No one escaped its touch. And now children across London are being hunted by ferocious grown-ups …
They’re bloodthirsty.
And they aren’t giving up.
DogNut and the rest of his crew set out to find their lost friends on a deadly mission from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace and beyond, as the sickos lie in wait.
But who are their friends and who are the enemy in this changed world?
The kids from THE DEAD have settled in the Tower of London and while life isn’t perfect, it’s steady and relatively safe. But steady and safe aren’t enough for DogNut. Haunted by a kid’s death during a scavenging mission and aware that with Jordan, Ed and Kyle there’s little room for him to shine, he decides to look for those who escaped on the lorry when Lambeth Bridge fell. With the plain, big-boned Courtney and some kids looking for their siblings, he plans to row down the Thames, find the missing kids, hook up with the delectable Brooke and carve out a new life for himself.
But DogNut’s dreams of glory spark a chain of events that affects the Buckingham Palace kids and the kids forced to leave Morrisons and Waitrose in Camden, not least because the Sickos seem to be organising themselves under St George’s leadership …
The third in Charlie Higson’s powerful zombie-style series, THE FEAR’s effectively a second prequel to THE ENEMY. That’s my main frustration with it because effectively, 2 books on from THE ENEMY we still don’t really know what’s happening with the Morrisons/Waitrose kids or their storyline.
That said, I liked the cheeky DogNut whose heart is in the right place for all his outrageous self-aggrandisement and the romance between him and the insecure Courtney is sweetly played out. I also enjoyed finding out what happened to the kids on the lorry and Higson does a really believable job of showing how they’ve organised themselves in the Natural History Museum. A new character, Shadowman, is also introduced and I liked his survivalist, pragmatic attitude and his relationship with the duplicitous Jester.
There’s plenty of horror thanks to the Collector, a Sicko who likes to play with kids before killing them and Higson develops St George’s storyline, as he builds a Sicko army. There are some terrifying scenes in the book and Higson again doesn’t shy away from killing characters who the reader’s grown to love. Be warned that there’s a lot of bleakness in the ending, but also hope as events pick back up with the arrival of the Morrisons/Waitrose kids at Buckingham Palace.
There is much more of a sense of the overall story coming together and with the action promising to move back to the Tower of London in book 4, I can’t wait to see what happens next.
The Verdict:
The third in Charlie Higson’s excellent zombie-style series is another chilling and entertaining read with plenty of bleakness and dark humour. However, it is effectively another prequel to THE ENEMY, which I did find a little irritating given that it’s been so long since the events in that book and I’m keen to find out what happened to the Morrisons and Waitrose crews.
