Layla, only a child when the Feeding destroyed the old world, spends her days scavenging the ruins for valuable scrap and her nights helping her adoptive family eke a living from the Redoubt’s only movie theater. Now, with her father slowly dying, Layla resolves to join the Crossers to retrieve the medicine that can save him. Smart, ruthless, and fast on her feet, Layla quickly gains the respect of her fellow Crossers. But, in a world lost to the deadliest predators, can even the most cunning prey survive?
I think somehow I’m always going to find comfort in the apocalypse.
It’s just one of those things for me. I’ll always be drawn to stories of crumbling societies, of total decimation, of survivors hanging on. Post-apocalyptic stories have appealed to me for as long as I can remember & I suspect they always will.
So it’s lucky for me that Anthony Ryan, one of my favorite fantasy authors, has been slowly branching out into horror, with an eye towards all things apocalyptic!
THE FEEDING is his latest foray into horror (after 2023’s RED RIVER SEVEN), and it reads like a mashup of THE ROAD and I AM LEGEND, but with Anthony Ryan’s trademark attention to characterization.
It’s set about fifteen years after what becomes known as the Feeding: when legions of vampire-like creatures (called Feeders) rose up & wiped out a significant portion of the human population. There’s some lore & classifications given to the Feeders…they’re not all created equal. Overall, the Feeders gave me zombie horde vibes, while still adhering (somewhat) to more traditional vampire lore. However you think of them, they are lethal and scary.
Our main character is a young woman named Layla, who was just a little kid when the Feeding took place. Nowadays she spends her time scavenging the underground of New City Redoubt (the walled-in city she calls home) for scrap to sell. Her adoptive family also runs a movie theatre in the city, where Layla helps out.
But resources are scarce in New City Redoubt, which means teams of brave people called Crossers need to leave the confines of the City in order to travel to & trade with other settlements. The life expectancy of a Crosser is…not high.
When a medical emergency for one of Layla’s family members strikes, Layla is left with no other choice but to join the ranks of the Crossers. She has a list of medications she needs to procure, and she is absolutely committed to doing so.
Layla’s subterranean excursions as a scavenger have prepared her physically for the world outside the walls, but being physically capable of handling herself does nothing to change the shock & horror she faces after leaving the (relative) comforts of home. She’s made some friends & loose alliances with the other Crossers, but Layla really learns to rely on herself a lot.
The book is a brisk ~275 pages & moves at a really fast pace. But Ryan really gives you a very tactile sense of the world around you. The different settlements & open-air markets. The sort of contained safety & comfort of New City Redoubt, and the threat of an almost certain death waiting just on the other side of a wall.
And Layla is everything you could want in a protagonist. She’s almost single-minded in her purpose, and just so relentlessly determined to protect the people who protected her. She’s easy to root for & her story is full of raw human emotion.
I really loved this and I hope we’ll keep seeing more Anthony Ryan horror novels in the future! Big thanks to Blackstone Publishing for sending this one my way!
Grimdark Dad 