“Before the blast, they say there’d been sermons about fire, about the end of the world.
The fire itself gave the last sermon; after that there were no more.”
In a post-apocalyptic world, after the human race almost nearly died out, like many species of plants and animals, those that remained vowed to not make the mistakes of the past. But the past is not something they can change, and its horror lingers on, thousands of years after the Blast.
In the After, there are no single children, only twins. One Alpha and one Omega. One perfect and one flawed. The Alpha gets to take his or her place in society and the Omega is thrown out, like stale food or garbage. The perfect Alphas are dominating, and crave complete control, especially over their counterparts. Because despite their physical differences, the twins are linked – linked by birth; linked by pain; linked by death.
For one cannot live if the other doesn’t survive.
Usually, Omegas are easy to identify, brand and hence control. But Cass and Zach are different. Neither is missing a limb, or has impaired speech or is missing a face part. They’re flawless. Two Alphas – which is unheard of. But one of them has a secret, and the other half of them knows the secret. A secret that could destroy them.
I has SUCH high expectations for The Fire Sermon, and it disappointed me completely. I don’t even have a proper reason to explain why I didn’t like it, it just seemed so detached from itself. The romance, the siblings, the fear, the Alpha domination, the rebels and the hope that I was supposed to feel, or rather was supposed to come out of the book – I got nothing. Just a bunch of words on a page.
Even when said twin *spoiler alert* does find the rebellion, it wasn’t even a real rebellion. They were just hiding, knowing that the island that they were on would become a trap for when the Alphas found it, and simply resigning themselves to that fate. Not only were they not fighting, but they were looking for somewhere to run too. Even their love triangle felt forced.
I guess after reading brilliant books, where people have the courage to stand up and fight instead of looking for a mythical land that has a high possibility of not existing, this one was a total disappointment. Two stars.
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