Book stats (from Amazon):
Summary/back-cover blurb (from Amazon):
John Sandford and Michele Cook follow up their New York Times bestseller, UNCAGED, with the next nail-biting installment in The Singular Menace series. Perfect for fans of The Maze Runner!
Shay Remby and her gang of renegades have struck a blow to the Singular Corporation. When they rescued Shay’s brother, Odin, from a secret Singular lab, they also liberated a girl. Singular has been experimenting on her, trying to implant a U.S. senator’s memories into her brain—with partial success. Fenfang is now a girl who literally knows too much.
Can the knowledge brought by ex-captives Odin and Fenfang help Shay and her friends expose the crimes of this corrupt corporation? Singular has already killed one of Shay’s band to protect their secrets. How many more will die before the truth is exposed?
Anyone who read my blog back in May has seen my review of the previous book in this series, Uncaged. I was originally planning on reviewing sequels to the books I'd previously reviewed in the same month of the next year (if that makes sense. If not, basically I intended to review Uncaged in May 2015 and Outrage in May 2016.) But I realized that not only would that make my blog extremely boring and predictable, there are some books that I can't wait to review, and others I wouldn't be able to find much different to say from what I said about the original books. That being said, I may reiterate some of the points I made in my review of Uncaged, but that is mainly due to how much I love this series. I rarely admit to this, but this especially is one of the books that can really get me excited about a series and about the story itself. As I am typing this, my hands are flying over the keyboard and I am fighting to put together sensible sentences rather than unintelligible strings of letters. I cannot believe how underrated this series is.
Spoilers below: You have been warned!
One of my favourite things about this series is that it isn't just children and teens running around on their own. I'm not bashing this plot device, and I am guilty of it as well, but in the context of this novel, it wouldn't make much sense for the teens to work on their own. The thing I love the most, however, is how, although the adult characters are more experienced and often more responsible than the teens, they aren't portrayed as stuffy or uptight, and the teenage characters don't constantly dismiss the adults' concerns or advice because "they're adults, they don't understand". I talked about Twist in the last review, and I still love him. This book also debuts another adult ally for Shay, Odin, Cruz, Cade, and Fenfang (more on her later) - I say debuts rather than introduces because he was already an established character in the first book. The character I am referring to is Harmon, the head of Singular's intelligence division. A former solider, he realizes what Singular is doing is wrong and decides to help Shay and her band of rebels take them down. Using his inside knowledge, Shay and the others are able to get closer to Singular's leaders than ever before. Twist and Harmon are not the only adults in the group, as there is also Danny and, formerly, West, they are arguably the most important and definitely my favourite two.
This book continues to up the ante in terms of plot, uncovering new depths of Singular's cruelty and how far their experiments have gone. People in positions of power, such as government officials, have been paying Singular for a sort of immortality. They kidnap young people - many of whom are Chinese and brought through North Korea to Singular's laboratories in the US, and wire their brains to erase their personalities and upload a new consciousness - that of the person who paid Singular - into their minds. This is the case with Fenfang, who was being held prisoner along with Odin. The personality that was partially uploaded into her brain was that of US Senator Charlotte Dash. Dash's personality periodically surfaces and takes over Fenfang's body, making her almost expose where the others are hiding. The partial upload of consciousness, however, means Fenfang also knows very private things about Dash, such as the codes for the safes in her house.
I'm going to end my review here, to avoid further spoilers. The third book, Rampage, is scheduled to be released in Fall 2016 (too long if you ask me). Overall, this book is amazing and very underrated. I think it would be enjoyed by both fans of Young Adult novels and fans of John Sandford's other work.
5/5 stars!
Edit 06/01/16: added hyperlink
