The Enemy by Charlie Higson Series: The Enemy #1
Published by Penguin on September 16th, 2009
Genres: Dystopian, Horror, YA
Goodreads
They'll chase you.
They'll rip you open.
They'll feed on you . . .
When the sickness came, every parent, policeman, politician — every adult — fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and hungry.
Only children under fourteen remain, and they're fighting to survive.
Now there are rumours of a safe place to hide. And so a gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city — down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground — the grown-ups lie in wait.
But can they make it there — alive?
*Note: this is a review about the book and the audio-book experience*
I’ve never listened to a book before, but I figured a 12 hour drive would be the perfect time to give it a try. So I went over to audible.com saw that they were doing a promotion of 7.49 per month for 1 audio-book per month. Figuring this was a great deal I signed up and started browsing their selection. I settled on a nice zombie read, The Enemy but unfortunately I forgot to download the book before I hit the road so I never got the chance to listen to it.
Fast forward 2 weeks, I’m typing up post and scribbling blog ideas and I accidentally press play on The Enemy and instead of turning it off (which was my 1st thought) I let it play….for FOUR HOURS! And you know what? It wasn’t a half bad experience. The fact that I washed the dishes, cleaned the living/dining room and folded laundry while getting through a book was really cool. But sadly the book just wasn’t my cup of tea.
I knew going in that the book was about a group of kids who are fighting for survival in a world where all the adults are crazed cannibals (NOT ZOMBIES!) but I didn’t guess that even children can be corrupt by the idea of power.
We start off with one of our kids being snatched up by a grown up. Bam just like that we are hitting the ground running! In fact, the entire 4 hours I listened to this book we didn’t stop running. I’m an action junkie so typically this would have been really great for me, but at times I was tired just from listening to them. Behind every corner, under every tree, in every building there was danger awaiting these kids who were just trying to make it to a mysterious “safe haven” across town.
Then my babies these poor kids make it to this “safe haven” and they become pawns in a game of political power. WITH OTHER KIDS! I’m sorry but when I was 13/14 (and under) politics was the last thing on my mind! And, I imagine, that in the even of the apocalypse it would still be the last thing on my mind. But hey, I guess there has to be some power hungry people around to run the masses.
Next I want to talk about the multiple POV. Typically I can handle 2 POV in a book, but anything more than that and I’m out. I didn’t know that The Enemy was a 10 POV read! I swear every single kid had some dialouge going and it always jumped around! My head spent from it all. And this is what caused my DNF. The story itself wasn’t horrible (maybe 2 stars?) but all those POV meshed with a “ok” story just made my head hurt.
