The Hunted by Charlie Higson

This is the sixth book in "The Enemies" series.  We get to see what life is like in the English countryside for the first time since the series began.  Kids have set up fortified places to live in places like Ascot and Windsor.

They do scavenging supply runs as their London counterparts do, but the zombies are less dense out there.  

Our heroine this time around is Ella. At the end of the last novel she had struck out into the countryside with a small group.  They were attacked and presumed dead or dying in a nightmarish middle of the night attack in a resort hotel.

Here she has been taken in by a frightening figure who acts like a zombie, looks like a zombie, but is somehow her protector.

He never speaks, often does not respond in any way.  He has a farm set with traps and snares to keep everything out.  She settles into a strange life with him providing for her.

Their odd existence unravels when a group of scavenging kids come to the farm.  Ella welcomes them because she is so glad of normal conversation, and kids her age.  

From the group they learn that masses of zombies are moving through the countryside heading towards London.  A massive herd of them passes through the farm, destroying everything.

Ella has a chance to go to a settlement, but chooses to stay behind with her protector.

Everything is set up for a return to London and a final battle between children and the zombies.  These are published in England a year before we get them here. Each time I finish one I say I'm going to order it from Amazon UK so I don't have to wait.  Maybe I will crack this time!

Librarian D.O.A. Booknotes

After a very long dry spell of not reading much I've been reading and am a happier soul.  Determined to write them up somewhere along the line I've been stacking them up in my craft room near my computer as a hint that I should just do it. 

I have actually started picking them off my pile and typing in thoughts in my apparently beloved Word.  Here is the first batch.

Librarian D.O.A  Booknotes

 

The Fallen Charlie Higson

The Enemy Series Book Five

 

The Fallen finally offers some answers to questions regarding the origin of the zombie plague. 

A few of the kids operating out of the Imperial War Museum have some scientific aptitude and they are hoping to find the origin of the disease and perhaps create a cure.

What might have been a trip of a few hours across London to get medical equipment and back turns into days.   Characters making the trip die, revolt spawns back at the museum as the group known as “The Holloway Kids” tries to fit in with a new group.  There is a traitor among the Museum group who brings destruction down upon both groups as they struggle.

These books are wonderfully fast paced and tense.  You’re rooting for these kids, and almost always the most sympathetic of them seem to die.  Sort of like The Walking Dead and the constant danger that favorites will be killed off.

 

The Ploughman’s Lunch and the Miser’s Feast Brian Yarvin

 

 

Nearly a year ago we had a wonderful trip to England.  Our picky picky selves were determined to try some pub food and local foods this time so we didn’t eat at Kentucky Fried every single day (Agh that happened one trip. So awful. So gross.) 

One of my favorite things that I tried in various places was the Ploughman’s Lunch which most often consists of cheeses, fruits, greens, ham, eggs and those odd little white onions.  There was always something that I liked and would eat in a Ploughman’s lunch.

This book has wonderful recipes for all sorts of things we tried and didn’t try.  Spotted Dick, really quite nice. Pease Porridge. Bubble and Squeak.

This would be great to read before you go so you know what to ask for, and it is totally fun to see what some of the foods were that you saw but weren’t bold enough to try.

Have your own nice pub meal right at home!

 

Seven for a Secret Lyndsay Faye

Sequel to The Gods of Gotham

 

Timothy and his brother Valentine become involved in the dire business of “slave catching”.  This is a lucrative business in 1846. It is so lucrative slave catchers steal free citizens off of the streets and from their homes, often with the blessing of the newly formed Police  and local politicians.

I saw the author locally and she said for her Valentine was the moral center of the stories, but he is so amoral that bothers me terribly.  Luckily, as I’m reading, Timothy is everything I’d want in a hero, brave, humble, determined to do what is right for everyone regardless of their color, sex or station in life.

This is a complex story, with so much information on the slave trade and the efforts of blacks at the time to find a way to defend and protect their loved ones while having no legal rights.  It seems such an impossible way to live, and find dignity, but they manage, just as people now somehow find a way to lead lives of freedom with the scales ever weighed against them.

The Fear by Charlie Higson

The is the third title by Charlie Higson featuring a world where everyone over the age of sixteen has become a zombie.  Set in London as was the last title, it ties together a few of the groups of kids who have made fortresses against the zombies in the heart of the city.

The main view point has shifted to DogNut, second in command at the Tower of London who goes across the city to find the group of kids who left in a truck at the end of The Dead.  He hopes to find Brooke, who he fancies.  By his side is less attractive but faithful Courtney who of course secretly loves DogNut.

I read the first two novels The Enemy and The Dead together and the The Fear a year afterward so I'm not sure if this seems less action packed than the first two  because of that, or what.  There is another book in the works called The Sacrifice.  According to Higson, the series will cover seven books.

Despite the fact that I waited a year to read this, read through it like a fiend, then felt that nobody got anywhere...I'm avidly checking Higson's site for information and am thinking I should buy the Sacrifice via Amazon UK when it comes out in England in September of this year...eek.  Then a whole year won't go by and I'll feel more like I picked right up where I left off.  I like the plan.

BookNotes: The Enemy and The Dead by Charlie Higson

I read the second book first, something I seem to be doing lately.

The Dead envisions a London that has either killed or turned into child-eating zombie like creatures everyone 16 and over. It starts in a boys school where the plague is new (just a week or so) and kids are fighting off the teachers who have slowly turned from protectors to raging slavering beasts.

The kids decide they have to try to get away from the school, hoping things are better in either the countryside or in London proper. The group splits, and is soon ravaged by younger zombies who overpower them and decimate their numbers. They fall back together under the protection of Greg, a former butcher with a young son who seems to have avoided the plague and who offers them a place on his bus, headed to London.

I thought the wide cast of characters were well drawn, and as they were inevitably picked off one by one, you really felt their loss. No character, no matter how likeable, was safe from being dispatched in a quick or spectacular manner.

If you like post apocalyptic novels, survival stories, or just adventures, you can't go wrong with this page turner.

The first book, The Enemy, which I read next, is a bit slower, characters not as well developed (in fact I had a hard time deciding who I liked and was rooting for quite a ways into the book).

The Enemy takes place about a year after the beginning of the zombie plague. Kids have holed up in a supermarket which they have reinforced, but they must go in an ever widening arc to scavenge for supplies.

On one of these runs they are ambushed by grownups, which is new behavior for these lumbering beasts. Their ranks are decimated, and their leader, who is the most engaging character, is fatally wounded. I think that Arran's getting taken out so soon before all the characters were established was a real flaw in this one. It just left a gap in leadership and someone to root for too early on. Hmmmm.

There are a few characters in The Enemy who are further developed in The Dead. There is a new book out in England in the series called The Fear which we won't get here for, what, a year? I hate those delays.

I suspect and hope in book three that many of our characters will come together in a nice climactic battle. I hate waiting so long for a sequel.