Review: Ferox by Chris Brausch

If all the teenage dystopian texts had a love child with all the darkest space operas you would get Ferox. It is a little wordy but it is clever so I'll forgive it its verbose nature.

Set a thousand years in the future where the world is pretty much starving to death and China has taken over New Zealand and made everyone into slaves. We follow the story of a few characters on both side of the conflict. We have the desperate and the pragmatic along with the plain just evil but they are pitched to us the reader in a way that makes us not completely hate them.

The story is very cleverly told unfortunately the bad guys are called the Fong and every time I read it all I heard in my head was, "I will fong you until your insides are out." Unfortunate, but it did make it more amusing though I doubt that was the intention.

This story passes the Bechdel test, at least there is a strong female character that certainly doesn't need any rescuing from anyone. I like it when the women are bad asses. The story in general is darker than I like but it is certainly realistic in the dark future it portrays. There are swear words but they aren't over used. Sex and violence are used to control and everyone is ruthless because that is the only way to survive.

The world building is exquisite. No fault can be found there. The characters are fully filled out and three dimensional though most of that gets lost in the large cast in the book. I think that might explain its length. Or is that just the wordiness (okay maybe I didn't forgive them for that)

I give it four stars. Half a star off because it is too long and dark for me and another half star for the terrible cover.