Under a Blood Red Sky

I read Numbers a few years ago and loved it. Went out and bought The Chaos, and put it in my To Be Read pile...where it languished, unread, for far longer than it should have. Recently the book began calling to me (true readers will understand that) so I picked it up and immediately got sucked in. I was thoroughly and totally reminded why I loved Numbers--the chill of impending doom and the inability to make anyone understand because you are so different that others will only think you are crazy.

Adam is the son of Jem (the main character in Numbers). He's inherited her "gift":  He sees people's death dates simply by looking into their eyes. At age fifteen, it becomes apparent to him that something big is going to happen on January 1, 2027, because there are so many people with that date reflected in their eyes. But Adam has no idea what to do about it: he's already too much of an outsider, and before she died, his mother warned both he and his Nan that they should not be in London on that date.

Sarah knows something awful is happening, too, because she continually has nightmares where a boy takes a baby from her and walks into the fire with it. When she meets Adam, she's stunned to realize he's the boy from her dreams--and she is pregnant. Her life harbors much worse secrets, however, and she takes off, but is she able to outrun what's coming?

This book is a page turner from the start, and Adam is a heartbreaker--everything he tries to do ends up coming out wrong somehow. Told in both his and Sarah's points of view, you get the feeling that it's all going to crash down around them, but it does seem to take longer than it should. However, the story is so captivating, and the outcome so expected yet unexpected, I literally inhaled the story. I also ordered Infinity, the final book in the trilogy, but don't worry: It's up next in my reading queue. I won't make the same mistake twice.

~taminator40