Dystopian novels isn't normally a genre I enjoy but I could not put this book down. Deon has away of setting a scene and describing the environment that is vivid.
I found the story very uplifting despite the subject matter

I thought this book was quite brilliant. A short way into the book I had to look up when it was first written - had it been post-covid like so many virus books are, I would have been quite disappointed, but I was glad to see it had been written well before.
I really appreciated the vast amount of research that must have been necessary to produce this book, and I thought the story was good and the writing too.
I read several reviews before I started it and was happy to find that I did not agree with those who said it was too unlikely (hello, covid!) nor that the ending was too daft - I delighted in the identity of the actual culprits! Haha! A great idea!

This book does what it says on the front cover. World wide pandemic wipes out most of the human population. A group of survivors band together. Now I think this genre has really hit home lately and there are a lot of books covering this now. So what makes this one different?

Easy.... It's set in South Africa. Despite the world falling apart, the author describes the Veld, and the wild animals roaming around. I think thats what won me over for this book. Yes, they were trying to rebuild but the animals nothing had changed. Made me think!

It's a good novel. But it's also more than that. It actually offers hope. It offers the hope that humanity can work together and begin to rebuild. Other books of this genre usually depicts the strong enforcing their strength over overs.

So, Yes it's different and why you should give it a go.

Enjoy!

I really enjoy an Armageddon type story. It is fascinating to see how others visualise the survival of the species in different ways. This was one of the good ones, totally absorbing from beginning to end. Great characters that were easy to identify with, compelling storyline and a believable structure. Great fun to read.

Wow! I absolutely love dystopian fiction and thought I'd read it all but this story of a man and his son seeking to build a new community in a ravaged world is truly amazing.
Brilliant characters and stunning plot twists. I want to read this author's backlist now!

Not read any other titles by this author but loved this one. Fantastic read from start to finish. Will definitely be reading more by this author. Recommend *****

I enjoyed this book but at times I felt like I was reading through a script of the walking dead! Same sort of storylines. It's a long read at over 500 pages and a bit drawn out at times but it kept my interest enough to keep me reading.

When I was at school we read Z For Zachariah and I was completely absorbed by its presentation of not just the dramatic events, but also the minutia of daily life and survival after a nuclear incident. Fever provides something of the same reading experience, dealing as it does with the establishment - by narrator Nico Storm's father, Willem - of a new settlement in the South African Karoo desert following a disastrous global pandemic. There is a refreshing focus on the mundane realities of survival, from planting crops and building irrigation systems to producing diesel from sunflower oil. The challenges of not just scraping by, but building a successful community, are made clear to the reader without the narrative ever feeling bogged down with detail. Excitement is provided by the regular incursions by groups of piratical raiders on motorbikes known as the KTM, and the battle scenes have a harrowing realism. Meanwhile, tension is derived from the fact that reader, from the first few pages of the book, knows that we are building to the murder of Willem Storm. Meyer is best known as a writer of Cape Town-set police procedural thrillers (which are, in my opinion, criminally under-read outside of his native South Africa) but this departure into dystopian post-apocalypse fiction is hugely absorbing, combining his knack for characterisation with narrative tension.

An absolute page turner,will have you reading long into the night,to find out what happens next.
Would love this to hit the big screen.

This is a long book, and has its longueurs, especially in the middle. It’s a stand-alone, post-apocalyptic story narrated in the first person by one of the rare survivors, Nico Storm, about the building and the tearing asunder, of a community based on civility and (at least to a certain extent) widespread democratic structures and procedures in the Karoo, in South Africa. It is Nico’s father, the widowed Willem, a polymath with a strong commitment to peace and tranquillity, who founds and, for a long time, presides over the key committee , in Amanzi. There are many other voices, created through the use of an oral history project in which people’s memories of how they got to the place they name ‘Amanzi’ (‘water’) are recorded and preserved. Meyer has written in many of the subgenres of crime fiction, and this is a new arrow in his quiver. There are nods to Cormac McCarthy, among others, including Meyer himself, and, perhaps, just perhaps, there are what look to me like coincidental references to a coming-of-age novel by Erich Segal, Love Story. You think this is impossible? Count the similarities. There are differences, of course, and the sentimentality of Segal’s book doesn’t sit easily with Deon Meyer’s favourite themes. And yet, and yet, Nico has three different kinds of father figures, one on the side of the angels, and two on very different sides. Spoiler alert: Fever has the most terrifying opening passage I’ve ever read, so if you, too, have to close the book and walk away from it for a while, you’re not alone. This is not like reading one of Meyer’s thrillers: it is too concerned with social, religious, and political (where these might stand alone) polemics that have appeared throughout Meyer’s work, most clearly Trackers.
How most of the inhabitants came to join the settlers is relatively simple: the world has been struck by a new, complex, and usually fatal virus, the ‘fever’ of the title, which quickly killed almost all the earth’s inhabitants. Willem and Nico were two of the very few who caught it but didn’t die. They were also two of the survivors whose moral compass remained reliable. Even for Meyer, the graphic violence of the marauders who prey on ordinary people trying to reconstruct their lives, is exceptional. Oh, yes, they take almost no prisoners, but they enslave those they do take, especially women. The word ‘slave’ is never mentioned, though ‘polygamy’ is. Even among the good guys, there’s an emphasis on repopulating the world. Among the important figures are people with skills that new towns need: not just health workers and engineers, electricians and teachers, ex-soldiers and church leaders (male only).
And Meyer’s themes? Well, I’d be surprised if he hasn’t been reading Nietzsche with his ideas of the kinds of people (that’s ‘men only’ again). In this novel ‘animals’ is the default basic term. The difficulties of democracy and religious practice, especially in the ways the two sit uneasily together, are embodied in the Pastor, Nkosi. By contrast, the best tracker is a young woman (of stunning beauty and grace); in Meyer’s world ‘tracker’ also means ‘hunter’, and there’s a lot of hunting to death in this book. What I can’t remember seeing before is a character such as Willem, the polymath (sort of); the references to history, especially to ancient Rome, intertwine with conversations about dictators and when they might be useful as well as feasible.
So this is an interesting book, if a bit of a mixture. For one thing, Meyer’s success at hiding people’s race or class origins is terrific. Domingo, the military character, tells us nothing about where he has come from, and we don’t know for a long time what he looks like; the former tennis pro, Beryl, is also unlabelled by colour. In Meyer’s world a man’s a man for all that, and so are some women, not least Nico’s mother.

Deon Mayer is a fine author. I’ve not read many of his novels but that is now going to change as this was a good and thought provoking read. I blame the Handmaid’s Tale for getting me all fired up about lost societies and new worlds etc so this fitted in nicely with that mould.

It stands out though for the sheer energy which comes from the book. Survivalist skills - well you’re going to need plenty of these if the world is ever wiped out to the extent it is here. The building of a community amongst the ashes was interesting to see and I wonder if we would be capable of such acts today. People with skills such as brick laying and military knowledge - that’s who you want to be trapped with! The art of survival is nicely done - fascinating to see how it might work and how people can really work together to create something better. All with the fear of the world outside that circle, it’s a gripping read and I felt fully immersed in both plot and environment. I wasn’t overly keen on the ending as felt there was more to come. Nevertheless the journey there had me hooked.

In a depleted world, scarce resources and dry environment, Deon Meyer stands tall and strong. This South African thriller is hot and bold.

This would make an interesting film! This had me feeling the fever from the get go - from the sweaty brow to the chills on the back of my neck. South Africa's wasteland became that of the world and it's an evocative and immersive read

One of the most compelling books I've read all year!! Fever is a post acolyptic novel with a twist, following the creation of a new society and a murder mystery thrown in there. Nico was an interesting character and I enjoyed the different character voices. Fantastic read, I give it 10/10

This is a very moving story set in a barely-populated South Africa after the collapse of all technical and social structures of the country in the wake of a fatal epidemic. The themes of survival and rebuild are interwoven with a delicately balanced relationship between a son and father, evolving as the boy reaches toward maturity and finds his own path and his own loyalties.

The writing is powerful and atmospheric, bringing the landscape and the people to life. There are occasional reminders of ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy but with much of the bleakness replaced by hope.

Nico Storm and his father Willem drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in South Africa--and the world, as far as they know--to have survived a devastating virus which has swept through the country. Their world turned upside down, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father's protector, even though he is still only a boy. But Willem Storm, though not a fighter, is both a thinker and a leader, a wise and compassionate man with a vision for a new community that survivors will rebuild from the ruins. And so a new community, Amanzi, is founded.

Told mostly through Nico's eyes, this is the story of survival in a destroyed world where humans have responded very differently; some returning to the basest of animal behaviours. It's the story of the age-old battle between religion and politics, and the power of one man's vision brought to life by a community who didn't know each other before.

I enjoyed the style of this book, with the Amanzi history project stories used effectively to progress the narrative and to add flavour from other characters. You know from the outset what you are building up to and Meyer keeps you is suspense right to the end - and you're not disappointed.