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Brother in the Land by Robert Swindells


Rating:

4 Stars


Themes:

Dystopian Fiction, Young Adult, Post-Apocalypse


Thoughts:

I was quite intrigued reading this one, the nuclear apocalypse happened quite quickly but we experienced the events with Danny rather than jumping in after everything had already happened which I’m used to. It also showed the way in which everyday people handles/reacted to it and the authorities were actually absent for most of the book which meant we got to see so much more of how Swindells feels people would treat each other with a lack of formal rules after such an event. It’s interesting that Swindells avoided mentioning any specifics of the year or time period the events happened and since there’d be no technology after that kind of collapse then it could even represent what would happen today despite it being written in 1984. The ending was really well written even if it wasn’t what I’d hoped for and does leave us with hope for the characters in the future too.


Favourite Quote:

“They used to say we had nukes to protect our way of life but where was it now?”

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