I’ve really enjoyed this book series, starting with the original Hater trilogy, and then expanded into this spinoff trilogy – The Final War series. The concept of the ‘Haters’; just regular people until some sort of hormonal trigger, sees anyone else who hasn’t had the same trigger - the unchanged – as a mortal enemy and they are driven to kill them at all costs , yet still essentially being human was such an original and brutal concept, and one that has kept up now after five books still being as brutal and compelling.
Matt has spent three months trying to get home. Hiding and avoiding roving tribes of Haters, watching as they’ve torn families apart, he’s done anything to get home to Jen. But home isn’t home anymore. The city is now a sprawling refugee fortress, where the local militarised government is trying to hold back the gathering hordes of Haters while the city strains against the ever-increasing population of unchanged looking for sanctuary. Matt has changed since the emergence of Haters, the constant battle and fear had made him hard and willing to do anything to survive, much to the shock of Jen. The situation in the city has Matt constantly on edge, the crush of people who don’t know what it takes to survive outside the city, the shortages of food, the increasing population and the CDF ruling the city, sacrificing parts of the city to the ever grow haters gathering outside the city despite constant bombardment. Desperate for more supplies, rather than wait in day long queues for very little, Matt volunteers for work outside the city for CDF to get a better supply line. Matt’s survival and new understanding in this new world attracts some attention from some in the CDF, and Matt finds himself working alongside a secret group within in CDF, working on a secret project – trying to ‘rehabilitate’ Haters. Matt’s main goal is to protect Jen, but as the Haters gather outside, food becomes scarce, and parts of the CDF begin evacuating; the idea of bringing in captured Haters into the city to try and ‘fix’ them seems like suicide. Matt and few others start on a plan to evacuate and hide, once the inevitable happens and the city falls and the Haters rage in killing everyone in their path.
The original Hater trilogy was different as your main character you followed was spoiler a Hater; sort of like a zombie being the main character in regular Zombie apocalypse book. The twist in this series, of following Matt, just a regular person – an unchanged, might seem a turn to something more traditional and common, but seen as continuation of the original trilogy, to see the other side, the unchanged side, greatly adds to the whole story narrative of the entire book series. Seeing both sides of this unimaginable disaster, really hits hard, and the way that is written, really carries the sense of desperation and fear, which is present through the book.
The tension in this book is rarely, if ever taken off. The protagonist Matt, his experiences as he made it back home, have turned him constantly on alert and vigilant, and this level of unease and tension is carried by him all the way through, and you the reader really notice this, and greatly enhances the general uncomfortable feeling through the book. Matts anger on how people who haven't seen what he has and can't comprehend what the works is now also seeps out with disdain. The sense of impeding collapse of the city, is done well, and even though if you’ve read the previous trilogy and now where that ends it’s still thrilling ending and with enough surprises thrown in.
The idea of various levels of Hater is a good one and one that wasn’t really touched upon in the Hater trilogy. While all Haters have an uncontrollable reaction to the unchanged when they encounter them, here it’s shown there’s more of a scale. While there are Haters where exterminating the unchanged is their sole purpose, like Danny and the other Haters, there are ones that don’t want to be part of its and hide away so they don’t come into contact with any unchanged, as once they see them, they can’t control themselves. I thought this was a good expansion of the world; that there are Haters, but these aren’t driven on a sort of crusade to wipe out the unchanged like the groups that Danny worked with before; but people isolating themselves so they don’t come into contact with any unchanged and get taken over by the murderous compulsion. The fact that Haters can be classed as ‘innocent’ and just caught in a life altering situation not of their own making, and one they can't control, I think is a good expansion to the lore. People who've give through the ‘Hater rehabilitation programme’ like spoiler Jayce spoiler are a real good addition. Their battle to control their urges when surrounded and their reasons why of sticking through it, are really well done and added an extra layer of complexity.
Matt is a good character, and how his survival while he crossed the country has affected him, is smartly done, with Jen and the others living in his house unable to grasp what it took for him to survive or what the world is like now. The others in the book; Jen, Jason, Franklin, Jayce are all decent, with my only real gripe being that we don't spend enough with them. I would have liked more on Franklin, Jen, and Jayce in particular. It’s not that matt isn’t enough to carry the story, he is, just I felt there was more there if these characters were expanded on just a bit more.
The book throws in a few surprises, which are actual surprises. Finding out which are the Haters who are able to put some control into their behaviour. You had Haters able to control themselves in Dog Blood, but this was a Hater plot in infiltrate and bring down unchanged safe houses; here what’s left of government trying to find a less violent option and some sort of way to coexist. This book starts interweaving with Dogs Blood, with even Danny being briefly seen, and how the CDF’s plan of rehabilitated Haters is subverted to become a Trojan horse for the Haters to get into the city.
I really enjoyed this book, pretty much how I loved the rest of the books in this story. The writing is tense, where I was unsure where it was going to go and the suspense is kept high, pretty much throughout. Flipping the story, to see the other side of what happened in the Hater trilogy really works, and I’m surprised by how original it is; that doesn’t feel just a rehash of the previous books.
I strongly recommend these; obviously after the reading the previous books. I feel if you started reading this new trilogy first, you wouldn't get the same impact you'd get after reading the first trilogy. So first read the Hater trilogy, then start this one.