Young Adult Book Review – The Fearless – Emma Pass
Recommended for – Young Adults/Adults
With huge thanks to
Random House UK for the advanced copy
There are three books this year that I’m head over heels
excited about. One of them is The Tournament
by Matthew Reilly (it’s arrived in the library! Huzzah!) and one of them is Heir of Fire by Sarah J Maas (book three
of the Throne of Glass series). The
third was The Fearless by Emma Pass,
and I’ve had the absolute delight and privilege to get hold of a copy and read
it a few months before it’s officially out. Bless those with the power to do
such a thing, because it’s another absolute corker.
The Fearless
revolves around the breakdown of society in the UK and the rest of the world,
as soldiers injected with the Fearless serum, designed to eliminate fear and
increase their strength and healing ability, become dependent on a weaponised
strain. They turn into aggressive nutcases with super strength and silver eyes,
determined to turn everyone else like them.
We begin our story with 10 year old Cass and her friend Sol
at the time the first wave of invasion begins, with them fleeing to the Isle of
Mann and a new colony called Hope, along with Sol’s father. Seven years later,
the kidnapping of Cass’s younger brother Jori leads her to mainland Britain in
an attempt to rescue him, where she’ll join with a young Scot, Myo, and his own
group of survivors. That’s as far as I’ll go with the plot for fear of spoiling
too much…
I love that we’ve got a strong YA writer using dystopian
Britain as a backdrop, especially when it’s writing about local areas that I
recognise. In this day and age, the plot is one that certainly touches on the
realms of reality. Doubtless there are military experiments out there trying to
do virtually the same thing as we speak (I’ve watched a lot of films and they’re
all based in fact, right?). It’s a different type of dystopian feel to ACID, which is good, because it means
there isn’t any re-treading of previous steps, and shows Emma’s breadth of
writing ability. She’s got a damn fine imagination, and a damn fine way of
making me skip back a few lines just to make sure I read her correctly, such
are the OMG moments that regularly crop up.
There are three characters whose points of view we see from.
I liked Cass. She’s a different type of heroine to Jenna from ACID, not so much of a ‘kick-ass’ type,
though she’s making strides towards it by the end. She’s ten years old when the
Fearless first invade, and she’s gone down the path of being a helper to
others, particularly her younger brother, rather than the hardened soul that
her friend Sol becomes. Sol has a much more tragic arc, clearly coping worse
with everything that has happened to them than Cass, and the culmination of his
story in The Fearless is an
absolutely jaw-dropping moment. It’s absolutely shocking, showing the depths to
which his mental state have plunged. He embraces the chance to seek revenge on
others through harsh means, far from Cass’s on more peaceful views, and to see
this from someone who was clearly a fun-loving ten year old is devastating. The other main character, Myo, is much more likeable,
though you can tell he and his group are hiding a big secret early on, and that
it’s going to cause ruptures with Cass later. The other supporting cast is full
of interesting characters, from Cass’s younger brother Jori to the helpful
nurse Nadine.
There’s tragedy right from the very beginning, the type of
which needs to be present in a dystopian thriller to really hammer home just
how terrible life has become. Some of these tragedies are revisited later on
and are heart-breaking. Emma doesn’t pull any punches, and at times I feel as
if she’s virtually scanning my brain for my greatest apocalyptic fears and
writing them on paper just to see what my reaction will be. As mentioned above,
the demise of one character towards the end is shocking, and shows just how
deeply the madness of the situation these children have found themselves in has
affected them.
There are plenty of moral issues to ponder. Again, I don’t
want to spoil too much, but there are issues about whether to shield people
from the truth, whether to keep dangerous loved ones around, whether it’s more
humane to kill someone than strip them of their humanity...I like a book that
gets me thinking a bit, in between all the action. And this really is a book
filled with action. Right from the very beginning, the plot explodes around
Cass and Sol, and it never feels like it really lets up, which is what makes it
so compelling and unputdownable. Of course, they aren’t sprinting around
running from Fearless the entire time; there’s plenty of character and plot
building where the characters are sat around the lunch table etc., but it feels
like the plot constantly moves at a frantic pace, yet remaining very easy to
follow.
I have to give a shout out for the greatest re-naming of a ‘beloved’
shopping centre that has ever, and will ever, been written. For those of you
familiar with Meadowhall in Sheffield, you won’t stop smiling as soon as you
realise the joke. At least, I think that was the joke, right?! I always worry
with these things that I’ve interpreted them wrongly!
When I find a book that I love like this, it’s very hard for
me to find faults. I found a fairly generic bad guy in ACID, and here I suppose you could argue that some of the themes
aren’t anything groundbreaking. When you learn the truth about Myo’s group, for
example, I’d guessed it a while back. It’s not hard to guess which of the boys
Cass is going to fall for, either. In that respect, you could say that it’s not
re-writing the dystopian wheel. In all honesty, though, when it does all of
these things so well and makes it so compelling, does any of that really
matter? I’ve seen people slating Dan Brown’s Inferno, completely unfairly in my mind – yes, it’s basically just
another Dan Brown novel, but you know what you’re getting with it, which is a
fast paced adventure with plenty of twists that is a lot of fun to read. The Fearless is a really fun, exciting
and compelling Young Adult dystopian thriller that makes me want to read it all
in one go without stopping. What more could I ask for in that respect? Okay,
one minor quibble – it has the extra bits between chapters that ACID had, such as maps and documents,
but I want more! I’d have love to have had more news reports etc. showing what
happened in the seven years between ten year old Cass and seventeen year old
Cass, but then again once you’ve read the story you’ll realise why that might
actually not have been possible, due to various plot points. I shouldn’t moan
too much really, it seems like such a minor point.
Has The Fearless
lived up to its billing as one of my three most anticipated books of the year?
Damn right it has. As soon as it’s out in the library, I’ll be pushing it on
people like I still am with ACID. It
falls just short of a perfect score because it doesn’t quite sit on a level with ACID,
which is the pinnacle of YA dystopian thrillers for me. It is, however, absolutely
brilliant, and had it not been for a combination of parenting, work, losing my
iPad and a part-time university degree, I could easily have finished it in
glorious day of reading. I’ve not read a virus-esque dystopian thriller this
good, ever.
9.5/10
