Changes

The kids of Perdido Beach are still within the FAYZ, a barrier erected by Little Pete - no-one knows how - when the nuclear plant went into meltdown. An uneasy truce between Sam's tribe of Perdido Beach kids and Caine's Coates Academy kids is beginning to waver. The food is running out and the Darkness has its claws in all those it's encountered. Caine himself is reduced to delirium by the voice of the Darkness in his head and Lana the healer knows it's inevitable that she too will answer its call. Sam is struggling to keep any form of order. As more and more kids begin to develop special powers and the hunger bites deeper into everyone's bellies, it's inevitable that conflict will break out. And it does, in some very unpleasant ways.

I enjoyed ''Gone'', the first book in this series, and I enjoyed ''Hunger'' even more. It's an absolutely barnstorming sequel - page-turning, plot-driven and absolutely compelling. All fans of catastrophe fiction will love it and not least because it's accessible to a very wide range of readers. Grant has chosen mid-teens for his central characters, so they have appeal for readers from ten and up. Equally, they have love interests and slip into understandable vices sans an adult presence (we see alcohol, dope and some fairly realistic and nasty violence) and so older teens won't find them at all babyish or beneath notice.