The Dead (The Enemy #2) by Charlie Higson

The Dead

By Charlie Higson

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

[caption id="attachment_726" align="alignright" width="188"] The Dead (The Enemy #2) by Charlie Higson[/caption]

“And the day after that the internet stops working. It just disappears. That’s when people finally realize that something serious is happening.”

That got me. How true. It really would take the internet breaking for people to realize some serious shit was going down.

The Dead, Charlie Higson’s second book in The Enemy series, begins during the first days of the epidemic that will go on to either kill or turn grown-ups into zombie-esque kid eaters (note: technically they’re not zombies because they’re still living, but they fit the rest of the stereotype). A YouTube video of a terrified kid claiming the grown-ups were turning into monsters goes viral. People wonder if it’s just a joke, but they quickly become aware it’s no laughing matter.

The book skips ahead a few weeks to a group of boys trying to survive in their school after all the teachers have turned. Ed is the popular boy. Jack is the obvious leader. The rest of the group ranges from lacrosse players to nerds to a prissy fashionista. They escape and head for the country, picking up their now-deceased French teacher’s daughter and another crew holed up in a church (including a kid who thinks he’s a prophet and his minions).

They don’t get far before they’re apprehended by a group of grown-ups and rescued by a bus with a few kids driven by, unbelievably, an uninfected adult. George, the somewhat-unhinged bus driver, is taking his son into the city where George says it’s safer. But can they trust George?

The Dead was a pleasant surprise from the first book, The Enemy, which I found amazingly boring and overly confusing.

What I liked:

Quality of characters. In the first book, there were so many characters competing for the spotlight no one really stood out. Don’t get me wrong, this book has a lot of characters too, but the coverage was focused on a couple characters rather than spread out between all of them. I felt like I was able to understand characters like Jack and Ed and actually see them grow throughout the book.

Writing style. Although it’s still written at a pretty simplistic level, there were fewer moments where I felt like facepalming over redundant text.

Intelligence. The nerds really brought a smart factor to this series – something that wasn’t at all present in the first book (it primarily focused on fighters). They established a committee of smart kids to brainstorm scientific ideas about the grown-ups – why some of them die and others are turned into zombies, the varied rate of decomposition in the grown-ups, why they prefer to eat children when there is much easier prey to catch. Their conversations forced more critical thinking and understanding about the zombies rather than just taking them at face value.

The diseased mind. We had the opportunity to see inside the thoughts of those turning into zombies and it was fascinating, disturbing and even pretty funny. Reading as the zombies desperately tried to hold on to their thoughts when things began to stop making sense. Simple words would drop out of their vocabulary almost as if something were slowly eating holes through their brain. It was almost like a horrific case of ADD (at least in the initial stages). Then the instinct and anger takes over and they become dangerous. One could use this evidence to argue that the zombies are still, somewhat, people. Personally, I didn’t feel sorry for them.

The tie in to the first book. Honestly, you could read book two first and book one second – I don’t think it would totally matter. But I liked the way all the characters and groups began to tie into one another to paint a bigger picture.

What I didn’t like:

The age game. OK, seriously? Maybe zombie bugs have been eating my brain, but it seems we’ve been quote two different ages for the cut off on who gets infected and who doesn’t. I swear I’ve heard those older than 14 became infected and those older than 16 became infected. Maybe it just changes between groups since they only have their own experiences to judge from?

Brooke. She was obnoxious, overly rude to everyone and just sounded trashy. There was a glimpse into her past – like she had lived a difficult life and her mom died – but that’s no excuse for how over the top she acts. I felt like there was this ploy to feel sorry for her, but I didn’t get it.

This book was a vast improvement from The Enemy. It was more diversified with better characters and a far better plot. I couldn’t wait to jump into the third book, The Fear.