One day at school Liam gets “the call”. The one for which his father has been training him and his sister, Lilly, all their lives. It’s the phone call from his mother to tell him to get his sister and go straight to the Mountain Place. An apocalyptic disaster is imminent and there is no time to waste. I riveting suspenseful teenage read as we follow a group of mismatched children on their journey of survival after a nuclear explosion destroys everything they have ever known.

Very well written with teenage readers in mind. Present day story interspersed with flashbacks in italics made it easy to know where you were in the story.
Lots of current references such as Beyonce, Twilight, Zac Ephron and Facebook which all teens will relate to.
The protagonist, Liam, stepped up and took control immediately drawing on things he had learned from his father through years of survival training. Though at the time he thought the training boring and unnecessary. The story line was very realistic with the children bickering amongst themselves and then realising that they will have to get along and work together to survive. A fast paced story full of suspense had me subconsciously holding my breath at times. The cliff hanger at the end left me wanting more.

Loved this book. I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction and its great to see the genre written for young adults.
Looking forward to the next installment.

This is a great story. Despite being another end of the world scenario, this one was original and well developed. The characters were appealing and interesting. They showed how being different from everyone else can be an advantage for you at the most unexpected times. I can't wait to read the sequel!

This was a good book. It is obviously a series, but the author gives a significant plot resolution. I will be reviewing on my blog and suggesting this book for purchase.

Great apocalyptic/post apocalyptic YA series. This is the perfect start into a new series. Liam gets a call from his mother during school, telling him to leave for the mountains with his little sister as a catastrophe is coming. Not making it in time Liam has to bug in with a unusual group of people in the families bunker, as his father was a prepper. Stuck in there with his sister (down-syndrom), her best friend, his best friend, neighborhood kids and on top of this his enemy from school, Liam knows he will have to fulfill his promise to his mother and head to the mountains. The group makes their way there stumbling over obstacles and learn that trust in those times is a hard thing to find. I cannot wait for the next istallment.

Having grown up in the Cold War, I have always had a morbid fascination with anything related to doomsday, but in particular with nuclear holocaust. I’m aware that my reading dystopia now is an obsession born of that fear. It’s been the equivalent of continually prodding a hole in your tooth with your tongue or picking a scab. Despite it terrifying the living daylights out of me, I couldn't help but returning to the scene of trauma, observing, gathering information, considering possibilities. Maybe in an attempt to rationalise absolute horror or the possibility of not just my own extinction but that of our entire planet.

It was a possibility in the 80s, one we got very very close to around ’84, and to this day I can’t decide whether it makes suitable Young Adult fiction. It is too unimaginably awful to be child’s play. Of course, there is the current trend of post-apocalyptic teen fiction, but it’s all set in a fairly far-off dystopia which is safe enough for a young mind to contemplate and play with. Enough interspersed with young romance and heroism that makes those scenarios abstractly symbolic enough to not become gratuitous. But something as real and close to home as nuclear holocaust?

I have always been in two minds about it. I think kids need to know about certain issues, and shouldn't be left in the dark about them. And we definitely shouldn't talk down to them. But then again, it’s our job to protect them from fear too big to be processed healthily in a young mind, and I think if kids read these kind of books, they need to be talked about with adults and contextualised. It’s not something juvenile cognition can cope with on its own.

I first read a children’s book about Hiroshima, The Day of the Bomb by Karl Bruckner, the true story of Sadako Sasaki, the girl with the thousand cranes – ironically a present for International Children’s Day, when I was about 9. Then there was the equally harrowing Raymond Briggs film When the Wind Blows, which some fool had broadcast on a Saturday afternoon, during a children’s matinee. All this in a time where talk of nuclear threat was on the news on a daily basis. Altogether, for me it was a bit much – it gave me nightmares.

Then, when I was 11, there was a terrifying book called The Last Children by renowned German author Gudrun Pausewang, dealing with an atomic attack on central Germany and the effect on and pitiful demise of a family. It was syllabus material then, and no doubt valuable in a time when every ounce of peace movement was needed. But it’s still one of the most horrific books I have read on the subject. It had everything. Graphic descriptions of a scorched earth. Horrible mutilations. Radiation sickness. The disintegration of civilised society. Deformed newborns. And one particularly powerful scene of a teenage boy whose legs had been torn off by the blast and who only got around by means of a rickety, soiled pram, hanging himself off a tree by a wall on which he had written “Damned parents”: The parents who had stood by and done nothing to stop the nuclear arms race. It was meant to be a cautionary tale, and, justified, Pausewang didn’t hold back.

The more astounded I was recently when I saw that Louise Lawrence’s Children of the Dust is classed as 9-12. While it is by far not as bleak as Pausewang, and actually has an ending of hope,the first half is still pretty full-on. I have recommended it to parents, but with a word of warning - I don't think it should nor is meant to be read "alone".

Still, as a grown-up, I can’t help myself but read everything on the subject I can get my hands on. Thus it was inevitable that I picked up Doomsday Kids. And here’s the verdict:

It is doubtlessly well-written. I love the characters, who are mildly cliched (there’s a jock and a princess and a weird girl and the loner type, but then, teenagers tend to fit themselves into one category or another for a sense of belonging, so I think those “classifications” work), but the variety of them makes for some tense, conflict-ridden reading. Imagine those different types locked into a small shelter, having to get along, because the only alternative is a bombed out, radioactive world outside. I like that different ethnic groups and disability were represented (the little sister has Down’s Syndrome): you ended up getting a good cross-section of the population. And none of these characters were static: each one of them grows and develops and becomes deeper and more rounded with every page. None of them end up being fully good or fully evil, no one having a moral high ground. They’re kids suddenly confronted with the end of the world, having to survive without their parents, where they suddenly can no longer trust even those they thought to know well, and adults become a threat more than a source of protection and help. They are kids who have to deal with sickness, injury, hunger, emotional distress. They make good and bad decisions. They are fallible and vulnerable. They’re kids.

The story is carried and paced well, suspense is kept up throughout. It ends on a cliffhanger that made me scream “What? You can’t stop now, man! WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN?” – so in that respect it has done a great job of storytelling.

It’s a fairly harrowing tale – again not as extreme as Pausewang, but still pretty gruesome. I can’t decide whether I liked or disliked how amazingly those kids had it together, all circumstances considered. But would a young mind be calmer because it couldn't grasp the true horror...or would it collapse for the same reason? Again, that would probably vary from person to person, but that mental struggle didn't come across as strongly as it could have. Also, I couldn't help but think that the threat of radiation sickness was somewhat underplayed. The actual scope of what nuclear war means is missing, reducing it to the playful horror of a computer game. Maybe it’s intentionally played down in order to protect the young reader, and maybe it's still coming in one of the sequels, but inevitably I worry that it creates a “meh” attitude towards the subject matter. What bothers me is that it seems to treat nuclear war more as a form of entertainment in the wake of the current YA Dystopia trend.

The question raised for me again is: Is softening young adult post-apocalyptic literature (especially using scenarios that pose or have posed a real threat) irresponsible? Or should young adults be protected from these subjects by giving them a “light” version? I’m in two minds about it, always aware of the fears I lived with as a child, but now, at the same time, glad I wasn’t patronised by a sugar-coated apocalypse.

I have grown up with these type of books being treated as a warning, being politicised, being catalysts of public debate. I think if we’re dealing with true threats, they shouldn't be used as a mere source of entertainment.

Because, maybe - MAYBE - we’re meant to be scared to death of some things.

I found the book quite difficult to get into at first but then started to get involved with the characters and time raced by. I became totally absorbed in the characters and their fight for survival and safety. I hope the following books live up to this great beginning

Fantastic! Wonderfully written story, following eight young people as they try to make their way to safety following a nuclear war. I've read all kinds of apocalyptic fiction, and this ranks right up there with some of my favorites. I am eagerly anticipating the rest of the books in this series.