The Fire Sermon

Apocalyptic dystopian fiction has long been a favourite of mine, and The Fire Sermon fits very much into that mold with some interesting and unique twists. The main conceit of the novel is that after some incident in the past (The Before, in the books parlance) everyone is born with a twin. One of the twins is born perfect, the other with some form of deformity (the alpha and the omega). The perfect Alpha's use this to suppress the Omega's, but due to some feature of the twinning process each of the twins is linked such that if one dies the other dies as well. It is an interesting concept, the idea of an oppression, but one where genocide is not an option.

This oppression based on differences has strong echoes of todays protests about racial inequality and a system fixed against someone lending the books some extra power. The methods the Alpha's have built into controlling their siblings are dark and impressive. The systematic oppression and stacking of the systems against the Omegas gradually take a darker and darker dimension as the novel unfolds.

This was a bleak story, but the messages are powerful, and the parallels to the real world are all to easy to draw. I look forward to seeing where this tale goes...

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This could have been a really interesting book but large parts of it didn't make any sense. At the beginning the main character Cass escapes from what is basically a prison. For most of the story she is trying to find her way to an island. A safe haven for Omegas. But even though there are presumably people out looking for Cass we don't see them till nearly the end of the book. Most of the time there is no sense of danger even though Cass is being hunted by these people.

While escaping the prison Cass rescues a guy, though there is no real reason why she rescues him. For most of the novel he hinders her escape attempt more than he helps. In fact it feels that the only reason he is in the book is to be a love interest. Which eventually turns into a love triangle like all “great” YA books.

The thing is the premise for this book is really interesting. It is set in a post apocalyptic world around 400 years after an explosion which we can assume – as there is machinery and electricity (even though it is banned) – was the result of an atomic bomb. This could have been a really good book but alas it was not.