The Dead

Gr 8 Up—Events in this prequel take place just over a year before those in Higson's The Enemy (Hyperion/Disney, 2010). A disease has infected everyone over the age of 16, beginning with coldlike symptoms and progressing to hideous boils. Many people are killed outright but others become mindless cannibals who seek out the flesh of young teens and children. The living dead are described in hideous detail—flesh decomposing, boils oozing pus, mucus, and blood dripping from what is left of their noses. Ed, Jack, Bam, and their mates are overmatched by these horrors but must try their best to protect the younger kids around them as well as scavenge food and water in a world with no functioning power supply, distribution network, Internet, or media. Jack leads them from a rural school into London in the hope of finding food and a defensible location. Inevitably, in a story of a handful of children against a good fraction of the adult population of London, the casualty list is extensive. The cast is large but the author does a fine job distinguishing his myriad characters and giving them their particular motivations, going so far as to present the viewpoints of some of the diseased. This is definitely not for the squeamish, but zombie stories are on the rise, so this action-packed tale ought to have a wide audience.—Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Library, Wisconsin Rapids, WI