Review: Apocalypsis: Book 4 (Haven) by Elle Casey

Purchase Price: $4.96 CDN on Amazon.ca
Apocalypsis: Book 4 (Haven) [Kindle Edition]

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Young Adult, Action Adventure, Series

Book Description: My name's Bryn Mathis. I'm seventeen years old, and I'm alive at a critical time in our world's history, unlike all the adults and babies who didn't survive the virus that almost wiped out the human race. Alliances are building, enemies are gathering, and everything's about to reach the boiling point. I'm in a race against time to get Haven ready for the final showdown, a confrontation that could very possibly destroy everything my friends and I have worked so hard to create. People I trusted have betrayed me. People who I thought were my enemies are not. Nothing is as it seems, and nothing will ever be the same for me, now that I've embarked on this one last adventure that could be the undoing of everything that is me. [From Amazon.ca]

Review:
This last book in the Apocalypsis Series, Haven was so much more than I could have expected, which is exactly what I have come to expect to the fabulous Elle Casey.

Picking up precisely where were left in the third book in the series, this final novel brings us in with no gentle embrace, we find Bryn, Peter, Bodo, and the rest of the 'survivors' finding shelter behind the chain-link and razor wire fences at the Florida prison they have come to call 'Haven'. With a steady influx of starving and wounded children, and work to be done, the group begins the unpleasant and often horrific work of 'cleaning' out the leftovers from the previous inhabitants of the prison. One scene in particular was so gruesome and shocking that I found myself feeling ill. I was really surprised to find myself reacting thusly, as I am a nurse and in no way unfamiliar with all manner of body exudates and have seen and handled many deceased in my time on the job. This was supremely gross, and I am impressed by Casey's ability to craft horror into a story that has been largely shocking, but not necessarily creepy and scary.

Bryn and friends realize that with the arrival of news that the kids in the Glades have been besieged by the hideously evil 'Canners', they must leave their sanctuary and go to try to get as many as they can to safety. As a small group heads out on the road to reach the Kahayatle, meeting trouble almost the entire way. There are some new friends, and new connections that serve to be monumentally important for the survival of the 'peace-minded'. But there are also cruel twists, malevolent individuals that have turned to such a dark place they are beyond reach.

Throughout the story, we are met with the conflict brewing between Bryn and her boyfriend Bodo. While Bryn decides to 'come clean' with Bodo about her small romantic indiscretion when he was lost to the group and likely dead, he refuses to forgive her, and piles on additional problems by refusing to speak to her and then becoming more secretive about his past. The tension is palpable, and it is finally a real teenage relationship. Of course, the communication troubles are compounded by the stress of attempting a rescue of friends where trust is essential.

When the Bryn and Bodo eventually reach the swamps, the signs are ominous. The boats are gone, and they must get into 'gator infested waters to get deeper into the area. There is a lot of loss in this novel, perhaps more than in all the other "Apocalypsis" series books combined. It is filled with violent struggles, society's breakdown now beyond repair as far as the "Canners" go, and people are fighting for land, food, resources, and just to stay alive. The consequences of a system breakdown on this societal level has left things like medication and other necessities of life scarce and disappearing rapidly. Casey has clearly thought about this deeply, and it is presented with the drama and dark humour one would expect, but also the sadness that cuts through it all.

Though there seems to be a challenge erupting the moment they adjust to the previous trauma's tremors, the group is tight knit and seem to be so well equipped to work together to create the world they want to live in, the kind of world that Bryn's father would have wanted for his daughter, and the one Bryn so richly deserves. While there is always trouble on the horizon, and room for new stories to be spun from all over the continent, by all the teens who are facing the horror and joys to be found in the 'new world', this book is immensely satisfying.

As others have hinted, the ending is not one most expected, not one that I saw coming, but it is precisely why Elle Casey is such an exceptional writer. You care about her characters, you root for the under-dog, you are horrified - thrilled- overwhelmed - and overjoyed as they all move through their individual journeys. Not everyone has a happy ending, not everyone makes it through the struggle, others are beyond hope, but they are all remarkably real, and you can understand on some level how they became the way they have after the tragedy that has befallen human-kind.

The scenes are fleshed out with the kind of detail that makes them so visually accessible, almost immediately, without being weighed down with too much flowery or filler words. The words have purpose, they move the story along, but there is also so much there to flesh out the story and make it feel real. It falls precisely into that perfect wedge of balance few authors get right. Elle Casey got it right in this novel, and in all the other works I have read from her. You shall not be disappointed.

Fired Up Rating: 5/5 Flames

 

Bottom Line: Highly Recommended. Read the whole series, you will absorb these novels into your soul, and they are fast reads - and they will stay with you. You will wonder what the characters are up to, even when you know that their world is not our world, it is just too real to ignore. Amazing read!