The Map of Bones (Fire Sermon, #2)

by Francesca Haig

"Book Two in the critically acclaimed The Fire Sermon trilogy--The Hunger Games meets Cormac McCarthy's The Road in this richly imagined post-apocalyptic series by award-winning poet Francesca Haig. Four hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire that has laid waste to civilization and nature. Though the radiation fallout has ended, for some unknowable reason every person is born with a twin. Of each pair, one is an Alpha--physically perfect in every way; and the other an Omega--burdened with deformity, small or large. With the Council ruling an apartheid-like society, Omegas are branded and ostracized while the Alphas have gathered the world's sparse resources for themselves. Though proclaiming their superiority, for all their effort, Alphas cannot escape one harsh fact: whenever one twin dies, so does the other. Cass is a rare Omega, one burdened with psychic foresight. While her twin, Zach, gains power on the Alpha Council, she dares to dream the most dangerous dream of all: equality. For daring to envision a world in which Alphas and Omegas live side-by-side as equals, both the Council and the Resistance have her in their sights"--

• ISBN10: 147676719X
• ISBN13: 9781476767192
• Publish Date: 3 May 2016 (first published 7 April 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: The Gallery Press
• Imprint: Gallery Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight
3.5*
This sequel picks up where The Fire Sermon ended, and while it took me a couple minutes to reacquaint myself with the characters, I remembered pretty much everything that went down in book one. (Which I won't tell you about, spoiler free here people.)

Anyway. The first half of the book, I won't lie, it was slow. Like, to the point that it seemed a bit repetitive and I was kind of bored. I felt like a lot of it was the same plot being rehashed, and that it was almost just filling space until the action began. That said, there were some new characters whose additions I enjoyed, so that kept me going during the first fifty to sixty percent.

But then things started to pick up quite a bit, and I felt like the story really took off again. The readers were given quite a bit of information on the world, which I loved, and the stakes got incredibly high. This series doesn't pull any punches- if the characters are being awful, there's not going to be sugar coating, and sometimes it can be hard to read, but it makes it feel much more authentic.

As the plot progressed and we got to know more about the world and the characters, I became very invested in the story again, and am very excited to see how the third book wraps things up! I have a feeling that there will be a lot of great secrets revealed, just as there were in this book.

Bottom Line: Despite a very slow beginning, this book does a great job of further developing a series that creates a very vivid picture of an eerie post apocalyptic world that keeps unraveling its secrets.

**Copy provided for review