Proof that women are no more intelligent than men when dealing with an end-of-the-world scenario.
Also proof, that men will still be thinking about sex even if they have gone through a traumatic sex slave, lab rat experiment.

Readable. It's a teenage zombie apocalypse version of 'Walking Dead' where women are concerned with problems as those in 'Children of Men' and 'The Handmaid's Tale'. Doubt Ethan Hawke will want to be in on this one.

"A fury of ferals?"

I liked this post-apocalyptic thriller - a lot. It wasn't a lot different than most of the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genre I read but it was different enough that it held my interest from beginning to end.

Allie Hilts is the protagonist of the tale, starting out as an athletic 16 year-old high school girl with a little sister and a loving family. Then the world as she knows it ends. There's a fire in a nearby lab that releases a mutated airborne virus that quickly infects the males on the planet, turning them into killing machines intent on one thing - killing all the females they come into contact with.

Three years later Allie and her little sister are still alive, living in an armed compound of women and girls and trying to keep positive in a devastated world.

I liked the characters in the story (especially Allie) and the authors described the new world and the "ferals" well enough that I soon was immersed in the women's fight for survival.

I received this book from Blumhouse Books through Net Galley and Edelweiss in exchange for my unbiased review.

Starts out strong, gets weaker as it goes along. I liked the concept, liked that it didn't drag out the start of the infection. The characters were mostly unlikable asshole types. I did not like the love story, nor did I like the ending.

It was a quick read. It took me roughly two hours to get through.

Now this was a good read! The set-up for the collapse of civilization was plausible. The characters were well-fleshed out and intriguing. The rampaging ferals were disturbing and frightening. The ending, while dark, still gave hope for a future for humanity. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a good post-apocalyptic story.

Creator of the Purge films, James DeMonaco, puts his own take on the zombie genre in this inventive horror novel – co-written with novelist Brian Evenson - that follows a small band of women fighting for survival after a virus turns the male population of the world into lurching killers.
After a familiar trek into a crowded zombie market (although the word is never used in the book), the story finds its own voice when Ally – a strong, warrior protagonist – stumbles across possibly the only unaffected man in the country.
This leads to a series of narrative twists that lead to a moral exploration on whether it’s the dead or the survivors who are the real monsters.
DeMonaco keeps a snappy pace with short, sharp chapters that keeps the action ticking along. Action scenes are written with a cinematic flair while Ally and Sam’s characters are well developed. Unfortunately, the supporting characters don’t receive the treatment and tend to wash into each other, while the decision to switch from first person to third person POV’s in chapters can be a little disjointing.
Feral is a fun read that doesn’t break the mould but carves out its own little piece of zombie lore while raising a few moral questions on how society would function if faced with a generational extinction.

A dystopian novel that is scary, creepy and features women kicking butt! From the writer/director of "The Purge" movies, Feral explores what happens when women are left to fend for themselves after all of the men are infected with a genetically engineered virus that makes them violent and blood-thirsty, causing them to hunt women down and slaughter them.

The main character Allie is well developed and an emotional character to explore. Her mental toughness is balanced by the love she has for her sister and her loyalty to the community she is protecting and scavenging for. Each of the female characters add an aspect to the story that makes the whole community work well within the disaster they are living in, and the Sam twist definitely kept me reading. A fast paced read, filled with action, plenty of gore and horror. Although this book is marketed as an adult horror novel, I feel like this falls more into the YA genre and will be very successful with readers who like The Hunger Games and Divergent series.

Loved this book! What a great read! Highly Recommend!

There was nothing really new about this book. It was an ok read but nothing exciting. For me, there was a bit too much unnecessary detail.

This book was good..really good. I normally don't go for books that have to do with superhumans, vampires, or in this case ferals.. This one intrigued me from the beginning. I didn't think it was possible, but there was action on every single page. You can't help but want to read this book nonstop . I would have done just that it i didn't have to work. This book is well written and is told mainly from Allies point of view. She's super tough, compassionate, strong and stubborn and these characteristics are evident whenever she is mentioned.. I wasn't shocked with the outcome with Sam. I felt like that was part almost predictable, however, that makes room for an amazing sequel.(that i would love love love to read) I highly recommend this book. !!!

Feral by James Demonaco and B.K. Evenson was received direct from the publisher. Feral is a decent enough read, not boring and moves along nicely enough but there was nothing in the book to grab me, so I skimmed through it at times to get to an action sequence or the like. Allie alone sequences were good and kept me interested enough in the storyline. This post apocalyptic book is about ferals (yes mostly zombies) who due to a fire at s chemical company turned all the men into with the women surviving and trying to stay alive.

3 stars

This is the sort of story I love. I've been reading PA/EOTW fiction for a long time now. Maybe that's why this book doesn't get the 4 or 5 star treatment from me. The story was really very good, and there wasn't a single moment where I was bored. Lots of action, women hating ferals, and likeable characters. I wish it had gone on for another one or two hundred pages. I wanted to read about what had happened in those missing 3 years, I think it would have developed the characters more. And ultimately, for me at least, the people in any book are what makes the difference between just a good book, or a great one. Feral is a good book. I just wish it had been better.
Thanks to Netgally, and the publishers for making this story available to me.

I'm a fan of The Purge movies, so when I saw the writer/director had written a book, I was immediately intrigued.

The first part of this book is fantastic - the reader sees through Allie's eyes how this apocalyptic event begins and the hard choices she makes in order to survive. Flash forward three years, and Allie has transformed from a talented lacrosse player worried about boys to a hardened feral killer with trust issues. Obviously, living through something like this will change a person, but I would have appreciated the inclusion of some events that caused this alteration. The three year interval is a blank slate and the reader sees what Allie is like mostly through internal monologues and observations of other characters.

Which brings me to this - Feral alternates between first person and third person, some of this with the same character, and different POVs from several characters. Different POVs aren't really a problem for me, but the shifts between first and third person are somewhat jarring.

Overall, this is a solid read - it doesn't bring anything new to the table with this genre, but it's fast-paced with some exciting action sequences and a pretty quick read. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC.

So, first things first. As you read this, you'll likely find yourself reminded of The Children of Men. There are differences, of course. Switch the men with the women and add in the Feral aspect to the pandemic that causes the issues.

Despite the similarity, this feels like a very different read. It's fast paced, violent, and full of action. It's also nice to have a book full of butt-kicking women. Don't worry - it's realistic and you have some who couldn't kick a butt if you paid them to. But for the most part, we've got girls kicking butt and taking names.

The world building is well done, as are the survival aspects of the book. Also fascinating are some moral dilemmas that come into play later in the book.

Good book and would make a blockbuster film!

“The writer and director of ‘The Purge’ franchise turns his hand to fiction”

“Feral” sees the writer and director of “The Purge” films turn his hand to writing fiction, with co-author Brian Evenson, who also writes under the pen-name BK Evenson. DeMonaco has many other Hollywood writing credits including the screenplay remake of “Assault on Precinct 13” and “The Negotiator” way back in 1998. At the time of writing “Purge 4” is in the pipeline with DeMonaco stepping back from directing duties, and there is even a mooted TV series. Evenson has a more established career in horror and has been nominated for many big genre writing awards. His distinguished career includes several novels, novellas, many short stories, has worked with Rob Zombie and contributed fiction to well established franchises including “Aliens” and “Halo”. So does this intriguing mix of authors create a great book?

Not really. The main problem is that this work is post-apocalyptic and this is an area which has been well covered in recent years, with many outstanding novels flying the flag. When reading “Feral” you’ll probably recall many of these books, all of which are better than this. Although it is a perfectly decent read, it has nothing to make it break out from the pack. I read a lot of this sort of stuff, recently Robert McCammon’s “The Border” and very recently “Defender” by GX Todd, both of which are several levels above this novel. However, if you want a fast paced and relatively undemanding page-turner “Feral” is perfectly readable, if nothing new.

The novel does have a very good opening. The main character, 16 year old Allie is at school, dealing with normal high-school concerns with boys, friends and her anger management issues. She is also great at sport. However, from the prologue we learn that due to some unknown chemical catastrophe, much of the population is dead when we pick up the story three years later. It all begins with some sort of chemical explosion reaction which only effects the genetics of males. The beginning of the end starts on a normal school day, boys (and men) get sick, begin to hyperventilate, and if they don’t die turn into super strong psychopaths who target and kill females. So within a couple of hours the local school becomes a killing ground, Allie escapes and returns home, kills her father (who has already killed her mother) and manages to save her little sister, Kim.

This was a very good strong sequence and the sudden jump to three years later killed some of the momentum and atmosphere for me. However, we quickly find out that all surviving males, now called “ferals” have continued to hunt and kill women and those that have survived hide in conclaves, fortified bunkers etc, where much of the remainder of the novel is set. In the three years that have passed Allie has turned from a sports-nut into a feral killing machine. Initially she reminded me of the ‘Michonne’ character from “The Walking Dead” and even covered herself in feral blood to disguise her scent when she is hunting. I would have been interested in knowing more of what went on in the three years, but there are no further major flashbacks.

For the sake of her sister Kim, Allie joins up with a group of around fifty women, including a scientist who is seeking a cure, or a reversal to the feral condition. As Allie is such a nasty killing machine she hunts ferals and brings them back to the compound alive (to be experimented on) no mean feat…. Along the way she discovers a particular nasty feral she calls “Scarface” and another surprise which contains a major plot twist in the second half of the novel. She also suspects the ferals are beginning to show heightened intelligence and hunt in bigger and more dangerous packs. They are also migrating in bigger numbers to her hunting ground. All suspicious stuff….

The structure was also a bit quirky, when the chapters have character names such as “Allie” or “Kim” they are written in the first person tense “I”, however, when chapters have no numbers they are written in the third person and I’m not sure whether this was sloppy writing or something else. It didn’t necessarily detract from the book, but was certainly unconventional and a bit messy. However, on occasions it was interesting to see Allie through the eyes of other characters. Other named characters include a few of the other women and the doctor, these contributions are a bit random and feel a bit like extra padding. It did have a pretty fast paced ending, hurtling into a twisted version of Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend” territory, but conclusion that was pretty predictable.

Although it’s aimed at the adult market I thought it had potential as an older YA novel. Allie was a spunky teen heroine and there is a decent romance in the second half of the book. It has been a popular trend in both post-apocalyptic and dystopian teen fiction to categorise people into groups, and is there anything more basic than ‘men versus women’? which is, of course, the major themes of this book. It’s violent, but not over the top, has a lot of swearing, but is a perfectly decent teen read.

This is not at all what I expected. I did not enjoy this one bit.

It’s been years since a fire at a highly classified research facility unleashed a deadly virus into the atmosphere. The disease killed off most of the men on the planet, and the ones who didn’t die became filled with tremendous rage, intent on wreaking havoc and killing anything that gets in their way. Allie lives in a walled city, while Ferals prowl the land outside the walls, looking for ways in. Allie begins to notice a change in the Feral’s behavior, they almost seem to be planning something, and all of a sudden, there seems to be a lot more of them outside the walls. What are they planning? Allie knows something terrible is coming, but how can she stop it? I have read a number of books lately where a virus kills off most of the women on earth, so this was a nice change. More believable than the zombie apocalypse and twice as scary