Layla has spent her entire life in the Redoubt, one of the last bastions of humanity in a ravaged world. She’s never been beyond the Redoubt’s walls; only Crossers, with their special training and survival skills, are permitted to venture into the shadow-haunted wastelands.
When Layla’s father falls ill, she knows she needs to find a cure. But no such medicine can be found within the Redoubt. Instead, her only chance is to pass a series of gruelling trials to become a Crosser, and then to strike out into the wilderness.
Where the feeders are.
Dark bleatings, my undead tribe! I’m reviewing an upcoming novel today, and I’m very excited to talk about it. It’s out this month in America, I believe, and not until October here in the UK, but it definitely deserves some early hype, so here we go.
Layla lives in what I’d consider a safe-zone, where food, medicine, and lots of other essentials are low in supply (not to mention luxuries), and people have returned to bartering for things. Money has no real purpose in…..THE VAMPIRE APOCALYPSE! I’ve read other reviews where people have called them zombies, and even one where someone referred to the monsters as zombie/vampire/werewolf hybrids, so I can only assume that this is somewhat open to interpretation. To me, they were 100% vampires, though.
If I had to summarise this in one line, I’d say it’s ‘I Am Legend meets Dying Light 2′. And I mean the book, I Am Legend, not those abominations of adaptations. We have a world that’s already been ravaged by vampires, and humans have been forced into secure settlements, where the slightly older people reminisce to the younger folk about movies and other things from the “Peace” times. I loved this little detail because it felt a lot like when I try to explain the time before the Internet to people half my age. The time before mobile phones…the time before streaming platforms. That classic time of TV where you got one episode of your favourite show per week, you couldn’t pause it so you had to sprint for a wee when there was an ad break, and if you missed the episode, you just missed it. But I digress.
People have their jobs, and our protagonist is a crosser, which means she makes supply runs outside the walls. Highly dangerous, but the only way to bring vital things into the community, and Layla has personal stakes for the run that we join her for. Returning home without a specific type of medication, which is extremely hard to get, is simply not an option.
What I Liked
The premise – this is the stuff of great games and movies, and I was thrilled to see it here in a book. I am permanently looking for great vampire fiction, and since the apocalypse is my favourite subgenre of horror, I couldn’t wait to read this as soon as it arrived.
The suspense – after Layla leaves the safety of the walls, I was always nervous. The vampires mostly appear at night…mostly, but they do surprise our characters during the day too. Every time they entered a building, I was mildly panicking. I kept thinking about those horrible nest vampires from John Carpenter’s Vampires bursting out of wardrobes and whatnot.
Fun with the vampires – the author did some different things with the typical lore, which made the story unpredictable and a lot of fun.
The author’s ruthlessness – and I shan’t elaborate on that, because of spoilers, but dear lord.
What I Disliked
Nothin’.
This wasn’t a perfect read for me, but not because the author did anything wrong in my eyes. I rated it 4/5, and it would have been a 5/5 for me if I wasn’t so tight about giving 5/5, and also if there had been more vampire scenes. One of my favourite book scenes of all time is in I Am Legend, when Robert gets home late and finds his house surrounded. I think what I was hoping for was LOADS of that kind of drama (don’t get me wrong though, there is plenty of carnage). I’m some sort of sadist, I guess, and I wanted more. Zombie horde numbers backing Layla against a wall perhaps.
Overall, I flew through the book and had a great time with it. The vampires are very creepy, I was fully on board with Layla, and there’s so much action that it was very hard to put down. This was my first Anthony Ryan book and it certainly won’t be my last. I’d definitely recommend this to horror fans!
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
THE FEEDING – UK PRE-ORDER LINK
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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