Fear, The (An Enemy Novel) [Hardcover]

Charlie Higson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 12, 2012 | Series: Enemy

The sickness struck everyone sixteen and over. 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 who are hungry, bloodthirsty, and not giving up.

DogNut and the rest of his crew, in search of the friends they lost during the fire, set off on a deadly mission from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace and beyond, as the sickos lie in wait. But who are their friends and who is the enemy in this changed world?

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lord of the Flies with zombies ... tons of nail-biting action! Rick Riordan, creator of Percy Jackson Brutal, blood-soaked, full of zombies ... it's ace FHM.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Charlie Higson is an acclaimed writer of screenplays and novels, and also a performer and the co-creator of the British television programs The Fast Show and Bellamy's People. He is an expert on James Bond and is the author of the internationally best-selling Young Bond series. Charlie, a big fan of horror movies, is hoping to give readers many sleepless nights with the Enemy series. He lives in London. Follow him on Twitter at: twitter.com/monstroso.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion Book CH; Reprint edition (June 12, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423134230
• ISBN-13: 978-1423134237
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charlie Higson is an acclaimed comedy writer, producer, actor, and genuine James Bond aficionado. He is the author of the adult thrillers, Full Whack and King of the Ants; the internationally best-selling Young Bond series: SilverFin, Blood Fever, Double or Die, Hurricane Gold, and By Royal Command; and the YA apocalyptic thriller: The Enemy, which he wrote to frighten his ten-year-old son. He lives in London. Follow him on Twitter at: twitter.com/monstroso

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Action, Zombies, More Action, Death and Zombies August 13, 2012

By Luke 22

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Oh my goodness this had me on the edge of my seat. I've read all the books in this series and you really need to read the first and second to appreciate this most. There are a lot of characters and many of them die but the author does a good job of keeping you connected to the story by giving you enough time to get to know and love the characters before something interesting happens to them. If you have a teenager that likes zombies, then they will love. This book takes place BETWEEN book 1 and book2, but if you read it after book 1 then it would give away the ending of book 2. So it just reveals a lot from book 2.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Page-turning action and gore July 17, 2012

By Teen Reads

Format:Hardcover

It's been a year since the sickness infected everyone over the age of 16 and turned them into flesh-eating monsters. DogNut and his crew have holed up in the Tower of London where they've been able to carve out a life for themselves, raiding for supplies by day and hiding in their fortress at night when the sickos are most active. But DogNut is getting restless. Not only is he tired of being cooped up in the Tower, he yearns for a position with more leadership and power. Organizing an expedition into the heart of London to see if other kids might have survived the epidemic --- and hoping to find the beautiful Brooke he last saw crossing the Lambeth Bridge during the fire a year ago --- DogNut leads a group of eight kids up the Thames and into the unknown.

THE FEAR is the third installment in Charlie Higson's series The Enemy, set in post-apocalyptic London where children fight for survival. While the primary enemy in these books has always been the shambling, zombie-like adults who feed on the flesh of children, Higson's latest makes it clear that there is a new problem that faces the children who have survived: other children. As DogNut and his group search for their friends among the various settlements in museums and government buildings --- and the hunters and squatters living in the streets --- their pressing problem besides the sickos is children who have become desperate or power hungry enough to attack other children. Whether it's the despotic David King who has set up a totalitarian state in Buckingham Palace, or crew mates left behind in moments of unexpected horror, THE FEAR is about the bonds of personal loyalty that are stretched to a breaking point in a world dominated by violence.

Frequently compared to LORD OF THE FLIES, this series offers an intriguing look at the different strategies for survival in a world without adults. In an interview with Teenreads.com in 2010, Higson resisted the comparison, instead saying he preferred to think of it as an epic adventure on the scale of The Lord of the Rings, which "starts small and domestic and keeps expanding and deepening until it's about saving the world itself." Expanding on the comparison, he said he felt his series was more optimistic than LORD OF THE FLIES, which depicts children descending into savages when removed from civilization: "In any society there is good and bad, but at least my kids do try and create a society. I wanted to portray a positive image of kids, who are often given a bad press these days, and show how, left to themselves, they're not as useless and anti-social as they're sometimes painted."

Though THE FEAR features some very upsetting betrayals between major characters --- kids who get left behind in moments of panic, and one deliberate act of treason that threatens the civilization these survivors have carefully built --- the themes of loyalty and friendship still come through. That DogNut and his crew would even attempt to find friends and family from which they have become separated in such a chaotic and dangerous world is itself an act of heroism. Higson's comparison to The Lord of the Rings --- or the epic medieval sagas on which it is based --- seems apt three books into the series, which is just as riveting as it was at its beginning and shows no signs of ending or becoming less interesting. The threads that connect each of these books --- which can be read in any order --- are just beginning to tighten, and there are enough unanswered questions that readers will be left hungry for more.

Though I recommend the series for its page-turning action and gore, my favorite aspect is the different strategies kids employ for survival and civilization. When DogNut and his crew finally reunite with their friends, some of them are found living in the Natural History Museum, where the nerdy "brain-trust" kids from book two have created a stronghold based on science. Using the museum labs, not only are they studying the disease that has afflicted all adult members of the population, they are also trying to rebuild the knowledge base that was lost when the disease hit.

Among them is Chris, a voracious reader in THE DEAD who has become the Natural History Museum's librarian and scribe. Collecting the stories of each of the survivors he meets has become his life's work. When DogNut resists Chris' request to record his story, saying it wouldn't be interesting, Chris responds: "I'm interested... And others will be too. We're the new generation. We're the survivors. We're making a whole new world here. In the future, kids are going to want to know what happened. How it was. I think your journey, crossing London, could be really important, because you've taken the first steps to uniting the kids all around London.... We're all in a book --- this book. We're all in the story. Tonight we're writing down your part in it, DogNut."

I suspect this statement more than any other in the book reflects Higson's commitment to creating a series that is as morally serious as it is riveting to read. It also holds the key to what I suspect readers will find in future books. It will be something more than "More zombies! More blood! More flesh-eating!" that Higson has promised for each of his sequels, but a quest in which the most unlikely heroes --- children --- can and will save a world savaged and brutalized by adults.

Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a proper sequel October 24, 2012

By moustache monkey

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

It is written well and exciting but at the same time lacking the qualities of a good sequel. It is showing the characters lives that were glossed over in the first book but that is all it's doing. It would have been a good sequel for the dead but the enemy, it has no link to it whatsoever. It is sort of building a story of the whole parents idea with the so-called Saint George and his army. The whole collector idea was fun to read and a good idea but is was also so useless. I think that Charlie Higson is trying to bring different characters to the story but I just want a little move on same in all the books in the series, a camp set up by a few kids it is going well and then some leader dies. It is an overly used destopian/ sci-fi idea about either adults being messed up or disappearing or in some poor books a child only planet where the adults mysteriously disappeared and funnily enough I was reading the Gone series where the parents disappear a bit like this book and there 5th book is called fear but Charlie Higson is not copying him because he released this book before fear.