Siege Review

TITLE Siege
AUTHOR Sarah Mussi
PUBLICATION
READ March 7th 2013 by Hodder Children's Books
SOURCE February 20, 2013

Leah Jackson - in detention. Then armed Year 9s burst in, shooting. She escapes, just. But the new Lock Down system for keeping intruders out is now locking everyone in. She takes to the ceilings and air vents with another student, Anton, and manages to use her mobile to call out to the world.

First: survive the gang - the so-called 'Eternal Knights'.
Second: rescue other kids taken hostage, and one urgently needing medical help.

Outside, parents gather, the army want intelligence, television cameras roll, psychologists give opinions, sociologists rationalize, doctors advise - and they all want a piece of Leah. Soon her phone battery is running out; the SAS want her to reconnoiter the hostage area ... But she is guarding a terrifying conviction. Her brother, Connor, is at the center of this horror. Is he with the Eternal Knights or just a pawn?

She remembers. All those times Connor reached out for help ... If she'd listened, voiced her fears about him earlier, would things be different now? Should she give up her brother?

With only Anton for company, surviving by wits alone, Leah wrestles with the terrible choices ...

This review contains spoilers.

Siege was a novel that I was actually pretty nervous to read when it came time to pick it up. First of all, the cover of the ARC is very jarring and screams unrelenting violence. Second of all, with recent events of the world it seemed like one that would be hard to read and possibly make me want to homeschool my children. I can say that the first 50% hit that mark, it was gory and seemed to be an act of teen rebellion but the way the story went in the latter half of the novel really ruined the whole experience for me as the novel became something the blurb says nothing about.

Here is the cover of the ARC for people who are now wondering:

I have no idea how I can talk about my disappointments without spoiling the plot of the novel. So there are going to be spoilers ahead, if you do plan on reading this novel turn back now, if you are going to heed my advice, read on! Okay, so I went into the novel bearing down for a gritty contemporary that was going to be a very literal and unflinching look at what goes on during a school shooting. I have a weird thing for books that deal with this topic and while I have read books that detail the events leading up to a shooting or the aftermath of one, I had never read a book that actually takes place DURING the actual shooting. The first half is just that, Leah is running, hiding in the ceiling tiles and attempting to save some friends of hers. All along there are these random seeds planted that point towards these people living in a dystopian society. The school has a hefty lock down protocol that is virtually undoable inside the school unless a fire blazes that was implemented after the citizens rioted one too many times. Then the whole shooting becomes one that the government planned and is broadcasting over the net to show just how violent the poor kids are and to prove to the world that these Challenge schools for them should be shut down because they are worthless and violent and don’t deserve an education. Yeah, so this was not a contemporary novel.

There wasn’t near enough development to explain why the government was doing this at all. All we get as far as world building really is just Leah remembering why some things are the way that they are, nothing more than that because it all takes place in a day during the shooting. The character development is a bit better than the world building at least with our MC Leah. She struggles throughout the book thinking about the possibility that her younger brother is among the shooters in the school and her feelings about that possibility are all over the place. She’s grown up with a depressed mother and as basically that sole caregiver for her younger siblings which had me feeling pretty bad for her. She didn’t always make good decisions and I found myself so frustrated at her constant need to get down out of the ceiling. I guess she had to though, it wouldn’t have been much of a story if she just hid up in the tiles through the whole thing, I guess I just wish her reasonings were better sometimes. The first time she gets down she is above the empty library that the Eternal Knights just left with all remaining surivivors. She wants to phone the police (which she did twice but then refused to talk) so she gets down out of the ceiling to go down to the boiler room where the furnaces will cover the sound of her voice. You’re above an empty library, rather than talking in a low voice to the police, I think getting down and running through the school is definitely a better course of action *sarcasm*. It just didn’t make sense. She's really the only character that we get development on, so even the people in the story left something to be desired.

This novel was not what I expected it to be and definitely not what it has been advertised to be. That left me feeling disappointed and angry at the book. I guess if you are looking for a light dystopian read that you can read without much reasoning and forget about world building entirely, then this could be for you. But as it stands I don’t think this one has a lot going for it and I can’t recommend it.