Hunted by GX Todd (The Voices: Book 2)

8/10

Rufus rushes in with a baby he rescued from certain death while the baby's mother lay dead at a roadside. Rufus and Albus had organised for many to be rescued from those who might hurt them or worse still, kill them, and more than anything  Albus wanted to carry on his sister, Ruby's work after they had received so much persecution from being different.

Todd knows how to start off a sequel with a frightening moment that jolts the senses into thinking the worst, but we can always be wrong, and in this case, thankfully we are. The premise of these novels is if the voice in your head wasn't yours, what would you do? And if it had a purpose, would you resist or obey that voice even if it was evil?

The story in its basic sense is a tale of good versus evil, where those who hear voices and who are good must hide from those who are evil, such as The Flitting Man. Ruby mentions in her letters about him that  he is a ghoul, a ghost who comes for you in your sleep and takes you away. The Flitting Man isn't the only one they have to worry about as the military have had their scientists working on a way of eradicating the voices for years without the public knowing about it.

Many have likened this series to Stephen King's The Stand with its good versus evil basic idea and The Flitting Man as a kind of Randall Flagg maybe. In Hunted what I enjoyed was getting to know more about The Flitting Man and the back stories of some of the other characters and what horrors they had already been through. What makes this novel a much scarier one than expected is how characters who are being pursued by The Flitting Man cope with their own problems and aren't as weak as they imagined.  Pilgrim and Lacey form the unlikely couple who, it seems are meant to find each other if they want to make a difference in this post-apocalyptic world Todd has created, while Albus is the father figure who gathers everyone together so they can at least survive what is coming next.

With so many books coming out this month, it might be an idea to pick this one out and the first in the series as it has plenty to say about the modern world if it went wrong, and how we might try to survive it.