I had
After the Fear waiting,
unread, on my tablet for the past few months. Only recently, when I was going
through my emails did I remember it and decided
why not read it? I haven’t anything better to do. And let me tell
you – that was one of the best decisions of my life.
After the Fear by
Rosanne River’s takes place in a dystopian society in which England has to pay
of the “debt”, which they do by holding these events called demonstrations. If
someone breaks the law, they get thrown into a demonstration. This book follows
the perspective of a younger heroin named Sola. It sounds quite like the Hunger Games when you talk about it, but
trust me. It’s better.
First of all, there is a well-written, strong female
protagonist in this novel. I’ve found it difficult to find books that realistically
portray a female lead, and River’s got it perfect in one. Sola faces not just
issues that exist only in this fictional world, but also ones that regular
teenage girls face, such as drama. But that drama doesn’t take over the book
and there’s still plenty of action to go around.
I see the comparison to the Hunger Games, but the two books are not the same. There is fighting
in an arena, but in After the Fear it’s
more Roman gladiator style verses attempting to live in a strange yet
controlled environment. The plots are also entirely different. This book is
much less of a story leading up to a rebellion and war and more about the main character
dealing with things as they’re thrown at her. She does find out about what the
government is doing, but for once, there’s a main character who actually thinks
better about striking back at full force.
The setting in this novel is fairly creative. It took
England and twisted it around. Cities stayed cities, but the names were changed
and the style of cities did too. No one could leave or enter them and, while
some of that is standard practice in dystopian novels, the way River’s went
about it and the setting she used as the base was fairly interesting.
There is also a political base to this novel as well. It
talks about debt and, similar in this sense to Anthony Horowitz’s Oblivion, takes an issue from today and
escalates it to how it might be in the long run if nothing is done. It was a
creative approach and the plot twist in the novel really ties it in to modern
day.
Overall, I give After
the Fear a five out of five. I can’t find much fault with the book and I
can see myself coming back to this book multiple times to reread. It easily
made my top five favourites of all time, and it’s fairly difficult for a book
to place there. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a bit of action
that also satisfies their dystopian society needs. I would also recommend it to
any Hunger Games fan. The romance in
this novel is fairly minimal as well, so while there is some, it is not
sickeningly so. The only warning I have about this novel is that there is a lot
of killing, and that could possibly make someone uncomfortable or be a bit of a
trigger warning. But overall, this book is brilliant and I highly recommend it.
