Charlie Higson

The Enemy series overall is absolutely 5 stars. I’m 27 and I’ve been as obsessed with this series as much as I have anything I’ve ever read! I love these books and Charlie Higson has done something amazing in building such a big cast of realistic and engaging characters with so many interweaving plots. This books finally brings it all back together for the final confrontation with St George and his army, but in the end (ha The End) I was left feeling like something was lacking. It’s show more too abrupt and I’m not completely satisfied given just how emotionally involved I’ve been with all these great characters.

I’m going to lay out some negative points but really this book is awesome, all these books are awesome, and you need to read them! (Whatever age you are!)

An epilogue is what this book really needs! As it is the story just ends very quickly following the final battle, and I mean quickly... like twenty pages later. I want to know what happens after! What do the kids do now the threat of St George is over? How to they put their society back together? Do they continue to work as one group or split off again? What about Just John’s squatters at the palace? Just a few pages, or even some notes on a year or five or ten years later. I’m invested in these kids!

I was also left wondering if that really was the end of the parasite/virus threat because this book just focused on London! Surely if it was airborne the rest of the world would be affected (if they weren’t why did nobody ever check on the situation)? The cynical part of me thinks Higson ended it the way he did so he wouldn’t have to tackle that issue!

The last third felt rushed but my main complaint is that there was barely any Ed! I know he pretty much got a whole book in The Hunted but he has been a key character and for me; the one I have the most invested in because he’s been part of the bigger emotional moments of the series. He turns up right at the very, very end to save the day and that’s all you get. Not to mention Malik/Scarface who was built up to be such a great character in the last book! He’s up there with Shadowman as being one of my favourites. He gets a line. This wasn’t enough! I care about these people. If you get to read all the books consecutively they you probably won’t feel that way, but I’ve had six months or so to wait for this.

I hated all the stuff with Paul and it just felt too unbelievable to have him really be able to communicate with the sickos. I can just about buy the Twisted Kids but the Paul stuff just didn’t make any logical sense to me. David infuriated me, as always, and I didn’t really understand why the heck Jester (and the others) stuck around with him when he’d clearly lost his mind! The way things end for David were also not satisfying; he was such a dick and made some dangerous and terrible selfish decisions that I felt he needed to really get what he deserved. The way things go felt like he got off too lightly and it wasn’t a big enough moment. I actually feel that there weren’t enough Big Moments (or main character deaths) for the finale of a series that has been so (Game of Thrones level) high stakes for six previous books.

All that said I didn’t put this book down and it felt amazing to be back in this world, with all these characters again. I was worried I’d forgotten what happened but it all came back to me almost immediately. These books are something special and I’m a bit sad it’s all over now. show less

This YA series by Charlie Higson is one of my favorites for sheer escapism and fun. The Fear is the third in his series that features rotting, diseased people who, like zombies, want to feast on the flesh of the living. In this case the flesh of children as everyone over the age of fifteen caught this strange disease that either killed outright or left the patient as a zombie-like creature.

Each book has dealt with a different band of children as they come together and fight for survival in show more the streets of London. By this, the third book, we have a groups of children scattered throughout some very interesting places in London. From Buckingham Palace to the Tower of London, each enclave has it’s own leader and each group feels that they are the ones who should have the most power. What they are slow to see is that the diseased are slowly evolving and although they still crave flesh, they appear to be getting smarter, stronger and faster.

A word of warning, each book has some extremely graphic, grisly moments and the author shows no compassion toward his main characters, as he randomly kills off some and saves others. I rather like this crap shoot atmosphere as it lends a quality of realness to the story. The Fear, like all the other books in this series, has plenty of blood-stained action and likeable although not necessarily long-lived characters.

For those who enjoy zombie stories, I would recommend this series starting with The Enemy as an stimulating variation. show less

The Fallen is book #5 in Charlie Higson’s The Enemy Series. Although this is the fifth book, the events occur 28 seconds after the end of The Enemy (#1), and are concurrent with events in The Sacrifice (#4).

I don’t always get to read books in order. When I wind up with an out-of-sequence book to review, the first challenge is to see if the book gives me enough backstory and context to let the novel stand on its own. In the opening chapter, a girl called Maxie is on the move through the show more streets of London, celebrating escape from Buckingham Palace. She’s with a pack of other youth and children called, “The Holloway kids.” It’s a perfect introduction to the characters, offering a bit about each without dumping too much information at once.

Maxie is a natural leader who cares about the kids around her. She sees their strengths first, and understands how every one of them contribute to their overall safety. She’s joined by Blue, the young man who leads the Morrisons gang, and it’s clear that their teamwork was the key to freeing them from the palace.

“It felt good to be with her friends. The world had turned cold and cruel, and friendship helped keep them warm. It was more important than ever to help each other and work together.”

Their intention is to get to the Natural History Museum, where another group of children have a secure place to live. Once they arrive, the Holloway kids find the museum under attack, overrun with “sickos,” the diseased, zombie-like grown-ups that roam London looking for children to kill and eat.

The Museum crew includes the would-be-scientist, Einstein, and other intelligent older kids who are studying the disease. Their plan to find medicines to help them survive, and the equipment needed to learn more about the disease, leads to a secret kept for over 15 years.

Of course, safety and survival is their ultimate goal. There are so many stories about adults in this scenario that it’s refreshing to read one where the fate of the world is in the hands of children. Yes, they make stupid mistakes. I cringed through several scenes, knowing their decisions were dangerous and foolish. The results were often tragically predictable.

Don’t get attached to too many characters. Higson kills people with wave after wave of puss-spewing, eyeball-bursting horror. His monsters are gloriously gross, whether they are bursters, diseased feral dogs, or the grotesquely disgusting “mothers and fathers” that hunt the children.

My issues with the novel are few. At first, I was put off by the number of chapters. Staring at a table of contents with 96 chapters made me wilt. Was it really that long? No, not really. The chapters are very short, some just a few pages, and it made me wonder if this was a device to manipulate the pacing of the story. When things slowed down, or when characters got a few hours of rest, the inevitable surprise attack was predictable and repetitive. When a group gets attacked by something other than “sickos”, I was relieved that it was something different, until the “sickos” showed up on cue.

I liked The Fallen. It was a quick read, because I had a hard time putting it down. Thanks to my eReader, I don’t need a flashlight anymore when I’m up way past my bedtime trying to squeeze in just one more chapter. That said, I know I’m not the intended audience for this series. I’m certain that the YA audience it was written for will have a much different opinion than I do.

I look forward to going back into the series, to catch up on the story that precedes this one, and find out what’s going on in other parts of the city.

I recommend this book for people who want a different perspective on survival post-zombie. The characters in this novel are fully-realized people with their own faults, fears, and hangups. Although they are children, they see and understand far more than many adults give them credit for. Some are brutal, some are kind, and some are tragically stupid.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. This review originally published at www.bookie-monster.com show less

The Fallen by Charlie Higson is the fifth book in his Enemy series, and I freely admit I am addicted to these YA books. Set in a not-to-distant future, a sickness has struck everyone over the age of 14. The ones that don’t die are left with ravaged bodies and twisted minds. They now roam the streets hungry for the flesh of other living creatures, in particular healthy children.

The author has introduced his readers to various groups of survivors, and the books skip around among these show more groups. He also changes the timing of his books, some happen a few months after the first book, while others are only seconds ahead. This is a series where you can never be sure whether any character is going to live, the author pulls no punches and no one is ever safe. The one constant through the books has been the setting of London. In this particular book, we follow a group of children who are living in the British Museum of Natural History. As characters get killed off, new ones are introduced and in this book, a group of very strange children with special skills come into the story and I suspect they are going to figure prominently in future books.

The action is fast and furious, the books are full of gore and violence. I think of these books as candy for the brain, and I devour them. Although The Fallen was exceedingly brutal at times it was also clever, fast-paced and made for compulsive reading. show less