It took a while for my local bookshop to get copies so it was
about a week after the book was released that I actually managed to get my hand
on 'The Sacrifice,' the latest book in 'The Enemy' series by Charlie Higson.
This is one series that I really enjoy. Set in London it's got zombies, the
only people left alive are children and they all get killed in really brutal
ways. It's great. The previous three books all started by following one main
character and also showing events from the point of view of a few others. And
at some point these main characters all died, further enforcing the point that
no one was safe.
This book follows
that same narrative structure (though I'm not going to tell you if
the main character dies or not.) The web of people relating what's happening
has spread, so you're getting a wider picture than you were in the previous
books, where most of the characters joined up in some way. Higson has also
decided to relate the cause of the outbreak. Sort of. Before we had the
kids hypothesizing all the different reasons that the zombies could
have come about, which ranged from government tests to global warming. It was
actually pretty entertaining and I think that that ignorance was good.
It reinforced that these are children and that they don't naturally know
everything. I don't think we needed to know why the zombies were here or why
they act in a particular way. But whatever. We're being given a reason so there
you go.
Not, of course,
that it's as easy as 'This is what happens.' By the end of the book you still
don't know exactly what's going on, though you can probably make a pretty
accurate guess. And this is another facet of ‘The Enemy’ series. You're left wondering
what happened a lot of the time.
Let me explain.
The first book in the series is The Enemy. It has a perfectly normal linear
timeline, going from point A to point B. It ends at a bit of a cliffhanger but
that just leaves you looking forward to the next book. However the next book,
'The Dead,' is a prequel, set a year before 'The Enemy' and featuring almost
completely different characters. It expands the general background of the story
and lets you know a small bit about one or two of the characters that appeared
in 'The Enemy.' Then the third book, 'The Fear,' is a continuation of one of
the characters from 'The Dead.' It happens about a year after the second book
but about a week or so before the start of 'The Enemy.' It continues on, again
involving some of the secondary characters from the other two books who are
beginning to get pretty central and involved, and ends at roughly the same
point as 'The Enemy.' This should leave us with another nice linear book, which
can tie up all the previous points and round everything off nicely. I was fully
expecting 'The Sacrifice,' to be the last in the series.
But no. Instead
'The Sacrifice' starts eight days after 'The Fear,' ends. It is, as I think I
said, a more widely spread novel so we see roughly three different story lines
as different groups go hither and yon. Again, we get people from the previous
books and again the world is expanded nicely. But we don't go anywhere near the
group from the first book and we're still left on the cliffhanger of what happened
to them, a cliffhanger that has lasted through three separate books.
That has to be some sort of record. I think that the next book will be the last
and tie everything up but for all I know Charlie Higson could be slowly
trolling us and the next book will be set in Paris two years in the future. I
wouldn't put it past him.
Don't get me
wrong. It's a really good, effective way to tell the story. We get to see each
character from several different points of view, can emphasize with almost
everyone and understand why they're doing it. It's made the cliffhanger bigger
in fact as we know more about what that group will be facing. But I just what
to know what happens next.
While I have said
that all of the books are quite violent, and they really are, this is definitely
the tamest of the lot. In 'The Enemy' the characters had survived for a year and
so were pretty tough but there were a lot of dangers out there and a lot of
people died. In 'The Dead,' the outbreak had only just happened so everyone was
pretty inexperienced and a lot more people died. 'The Fear' was just a
bloodbath from start to finish and I would really recommend not eating anything
while reading the first fifty or so pages. (Take it from someone who knows.
It's a really bad idea.) But 'The Sacrifice,' although a fair amount of people
do die, is nothing compared to the others, especially 'The Fear.' I'm
not sure why, whether Higson just didn't have as many characters that he wanted
to kill off or whether he got a lot of complaint letters from parents about
their children not sleeping after reading the last one. For whatever reason I'd
say that the age rating could be a whole two years younger on this one than the
others. Make of that what you will.
However for all
that this is still a really good book. The characters are interesting and
engaging, the story is well thought out, with a possible exception to
the cause of the disease (But he hasn't fully explained it yet so I'm
withholding judgement) and the details are suitably gory. So I heartily recommend
this series and this book with a 7 out of 10 rating.
