Sacrifice To The Flies, Fanie Viljoen, Penguin Random House, ISBN: 9781776354597

*Contains some spoilers.

AS the title suggests, the book is pretty grim and macabre. The author, Fanie Viiljoen, guides us into a dystopian post-apocalyptic world where a group of children have undergone severe, cruel and, at times, lethal training.

It quickly becomes evident that a fascist group, known as The Force, is running the world, and the children are led to believe that they are being trained as ‘defenders of the New Order’ to help take down the ‘evil’ rebels, unimaginatively known as the Antiforce.

The training they have to endure is so gruelling that only six of the 30 child-soldiers survive the programme. The small unit is then packed off to the Front to finally take on the Antiforce.

However, on the way, the unit’s tyrannical sergeant is brutally murdered. Each of the soldiers protest their innocence. But, who is lying?

Over the course of the book, the protagonist, Eliam, recalls the motives for each of the unit members, giving us details of the horrifying abuse and brainwashing the children experienced.

Despite the horrific details, I failed to fully connect and empathise with the characters. They were all very one-dimensional. The storyline was extremely predictable, including the one female character who felt inserted into the storyline as the eventual sexual assault victim.

And then, Viiljoen turns the story on its head with a completely unpredictable yet seemingly out-of-place ending. Considering the rest of the story, it just felt forced and rushed.

This felt like a mix of The Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games. The story had potential, but I felt it really needs to be fleshed out more for the reader to truly become engrossed in the characters and the horrors they endured. Mariclair Smit – 2/5 stars