Fire City by Bali Rai

Twenty-five years ago the world changed forever. A great war, which had raged for three years ended, and the reign of the Demons began...

Within the crumbling walls of Fire City, fifteen-year-old Martha is a member of the resistance, a small band of humans fighting for freedom in a lawless and horrifying new world. Amidst the chaos of battle arrives Jonah, a handsome stranger with a thirst for revenge and a power to destroy the Demon rulers.

As Martha and Jonah's lives collide, the future of the resistance is altered forever. The battle for humankind will now begin. An epic story of catastrophe, survival and the power of humanity.

This is not like any other of Bali Rai's novels.  It's futuristic and dystopian and possibly post apocalyptic, is my feeling.  And yet, it is very much like a lot of his other novels - because it looks closely at family, friendship, responsibility, affiliations, people's reasons for doing what they do...so in that respect it's not unlike any of his other books that deal with all these issues and more.

I also think it's like his other books because the world he shows us in Fire City is broken - Bali's stories always deal with broken communities and the repercussions of those so, really what I'm trying to say is that although it's a different book (genre wise) for Bali to have written, it is also the kind of book he's always written, with the added elements of actual bad ass demons.

The world of Fire City is complex and well drawn, you can't fault him on that.  The attitude of the various characters may come as a shock to some readers: they are pragmatic and levelheaded.  If people have dreams and aspirations, it's been beaten out of them.  Hope is something you keep tucked away in your heart of hearts and never ever let it show because it could mean the difference between life and death.  Their world is small.  It exists of Fire City alone, their small community of friends.  You shuffle along, you do your thing, you don't ask questions and you keep your head down, you do not draw attention to yourself.

Our introduction to this world is through Martha's eyes - she's a local to Fire City. She knows how to toe the line, how to keep a lowish profile.  As part of the local resistance group she hunts the hunters at night...this sounds dramatic, but basically it works as follows: there are 2 kinds of people in Fire City - those who are "Wanted" (they have cushy lives and are the elite) and the "Unwanteds" and these guys and girls do all the menial labour for very little in exchange.  The demons select people to hunt during the "Hunt" from the aptly named "Unwanted" populace.  And what Martha and the rest of the resistance do during this time is hunt the demons and save as many Unwanteds as they can find.

But it's when Jonah appears during the hunt that things are kicked up a notch - here is a very able bodied young man with a devastating skillset laying waste to bad ass creatures it takes the average human a long time to kill.

From the get go we understand that Jonah has secrets - for some time before we learn his name, he is merely "the stranger" and it reminded me of the novel the movie Drive is based on where the main character is only ever known as "the driver".  The mystery surrounding Jonah and his task (to take down the head demon and as many of his cronies as he can) is pivotal to the role.

Interestingly the narrative moves away from Martha and Jonah to other secondary cast members in Fire City.  It forms a greater picture as a whole, but it did jar me a bit as I'm not used to it in YA fiction.  But then, I did get used to it and I enjoyed getting to know the various voices and you come to understand the motivations behind their actions.

Martha is a very worthy, very strong character - she has her own skillset and her own inner demons and doubts to face.  I liked that she did a lot of the saving and she took point on various missions.  I didn't however feel that her assessment of Jonah when they first met rang true.  I had my doubts, I really did, that Bali would be able to pull off the attraction she felt towards this loner boy who seemed to be this flat facade.  But then I forget the power mysterious strangers have.  You want to know what's going on...and as we learn more about Jonah we realise why he holds up this facade to the world and you understand why Martha finds him so intriguing.

Fire City pulls no punches.  There is violence.  There is the reality of characters dying in bad ways.  There is greed and hubris.  The world they inhabit is tough and therefore they have to be tough - the story develops strong and fast and the characters are tough and strong but they never ever lose their humanity. Martha especially retains a great sense of compassion when faced with the suffering of the people she knows. She's impatient sometimes, she's rude but never out of malice, unless you are her stepdad well then, you better run.

There is a lot going on in Fire City.  I'd say that if you were a boy who likes RPG games and shoot 'em ups, you'd love Fire City.  There is action aplenty and the dystopian world Bali's created is very vivid.  Similarly, if you're a girl, you'll have fun with the action but you'll revel in Martha's strength and attitude. Bali takes his time setting things out and explaining things, so even reluctant readers, who may initially be put off by the size of the book, will be able to work their way through this with a sense of accomplishment.  The packaging is clever and the book looks great.

I think Bali's proved himself here that he remains one of the UK's top storytellers for teens. Well done, Mr. Rai, you shiny star.  More power to the writing elbow!

The Dead and The Fear by Charlie Higson

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.

 It’s said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I think the same can be said about my groaning to-be-read shelf. I read, enjoyed & reviewed the first book in Charlie Higson’s zombie-esque apocalypse back in January 2010, and had my antennae frantically waving around for signs of the second book in the series, The Dead. Yet but then when it did land (almost a year ago now- gulp!) it got lost on the shelf. But then I saw the saw the pearly white cover of the The Fear slide from an envelope and I knew that there wouldn’t be any distractions this time.

The Dead is in fact a prequel to The Enemy and goes back about a year to when the world had just been brought to its knees by the mysterious disease that transforms anyone over the age of 14 into scabrous, cannibalistic psychos with an aversion to sunlight. As with the previous book The Dead starts right in the action as we’re introduced to best friends Jack and Ed while they’re desperately trying to evade their teachers, who are in turn desperately trying to take a bite out of them. Charlie brings us up to speed on the situation pretty quickly and smoothly (which also means that if you can quite easily read these books out of sequence and start with the Dead) and wastes no time in getting the adventure on the road as the boys hit the road to find somewhere safer to hole up.

But this is Charlie Higson’s world, and he is not a benevolent god and the predatory adults lurking in the shadows quickly throw their tentative plans in disarray. An unlikely rescuer is at hand though, and so begins their journey into London, the initial impression of safety engendered by their rescue quickly being eroded by the subtle tension building beneath the surface as we get to know a bit more about their rescuer.

What follows their arrival in the not-so-welcoming streets of London is a well balanced cocktail of Dawn of the Dead and Lord of the Flies as the survivors fragment into various groups, either by choice or by circumstance. The world they inhabit is a harsh one, and I was glad to see that Charlie wasn’t pulling any punches. Violence is omnipresent, sudden, and shocking. Wounds get infected. People starve, or crack under the pressure of this new reality. That no character is safe is a fundamental part of the constant tension that permeates the series. The combination of Higson’s flair for vivid imagery and the solidity of the world he’s created is a winner that sees the pages fly by at an alarming rate.

The Fear picks up from The Dead in a smooth hand-over and offers more of the same, inexorably tightening the various threads of the story and drawing them towards what will be a massive conclusion. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait a bit longer for the conclusion as The Fear does a great job of setting things it up but leaves it open for the next one. Still, with writing that’s this entertaining I’m happy to pick up another instalment – but just one, mind you. The Fear was feeling a bit drawn out in places, so for me the next book really needs to deliver a knockout. There’s no reason it shouldn’t, given the world and the characters he’s brought to life, but then that’s what they said about Lost..

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Nearly fourteen years ago a freak virus swept across the world turning those infected from the living into the undead. Benny Imura has grown-up never knowing anything different; his last memories of his parents tainted by the image of them becoming zombies.

Now Benny is fifteen, and his brother Tom wants him to join the "family business" and train as a zombie killer. The last thing Benny wants is to work with Tom ­­- but at least the job should be an easy ride. Then the brothers head into the Rot and Ruin, an area full of wandering zombies, and Benny realises that being a bounty hunter isn't just about whacking zombies.

As he's confronted with the truths about the world around him, Benny finds his beliefs challenged and makes the most terrifying discovery of all, that sometimes the worst monsters you can imagine, are human…

“Benny Imura couldn’t hold a job, so he took to killing,” runs the first line of Rot and Ruin, and while it might look like a sentence, it’s actually a viciously barbed hook.

Set in the near future, R & R introduces us to Benny, who at 15 years old, only has fragmented memories of the apocalypse that consumed his parents world. Memories that include his older brother Tom abandoning their mother to the zombies, a betrayal he can’t move past and which is pulling them apart. To make it worse, everyone else respects and admires Tom, whose job as a zombie hunter doesn’t fit well with the truth that Benny knows. Or thinks he knows.

But the rules of their fortified town are clear: he’s fifteen now, so he must be apprenticed to a trade or see his rations and privileges cut. As his options dwindle it becomes clear that he will have to do the unthinkable and become his brother’s apprentice, and cross into the zombie-infested wilderness beyond the fences. It’s a journey that will rattle the foundations of everything he believes, and forces him to grow up fast- or die. The truth hidden amongst the Rot and Ruin is an unforgiving one, and if he survives it, his life will never be the same again.

I enjoyed R & R immensely. Benny is a lively character, and his evolution, both personally and in his relationships with his brother and friends, from the angry boy in the beginning to the person he is at the end feels genuine and unforced. While the setting for the story is a relatively familiar one, it feels fresh, with the zombies a omnipresent, lurking presence, as much a feature of the landscape as the shattered remnants of the fallen world that litter it.

Interested? You can read the first chapter here.

Rot and Ruin in the first in a new series by Jonathan Maberry and the second instalment, Dust and Decay, is out in September this year. It’s going in my diary!