Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered—her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right hand—a black oval with five marks on either side—that she doesn’t remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. She’s right.
Those bearing the tattoo have turned into mindless, violent beasts that roam the streets and sewers, preying upon the unbranded while a select few live protected inside a fortress-like wall, their lives devoted to rebuilding society and killing all who bear the mark.
Now Fiona has awakened branded, alone—and on the wrong side of the wall.
Fiona wakes up in an abandoned house with a tattoo on her right hand. She can’t remember how she got there or why she has the mark. What’s stranger is that it’s her old house, but it’s been destroyed, and she is no longer the thirteen year old she last remembers being. Fiona is thrust into a violent world where those bearing the mark have turned into senseless beasts, and the rest of humanity stays huddled inside a wall, venturing out only to hunt the beasts down. In this dystopian re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, Fiona finds herself marked for dead on the wrong side of the wall with little hope of survival.
What first drew me to this book is that Fiona wakes up on
the wrong side of the dystopia. It’s not a long drawn-out choice to be there.
Instead, she’s thrown into the action and must figure out who she is at the
same time she’s figuring out how to survive. And woah is the world violent! I’m
willing to go so far as to call this a dystopian/horror mash-up because of the
disastrous state of the world in this book.
Stung was a very
compelling read. The danger and action are non-stop, and I was glued to the
page to find out if Fiona had a chance. And of course I wanted more of the
handsome anti-hero helping Fiona survive. Who wouldn’t!? (Don’t worry, you get
plenty of handsome anti-hero action!)
If you’re into dystopians, loose fairy tale-retellings, or
survival stories, Stung is for you.
