The Raging Ones is a story that you will finish screaming. I can’t remember the last time a book ending left me so shocked and in need of the second one so badly. It is also a book that builds until it reaches a tidal wave.
Summary
In a freezing world, where everyone knows the day they will die, three teens break all odds.
Franny Bluecastle, a tough city teen, dreams of dying in opulence, to see wealth she’s never known. Like the entire world, she believes it’s impossible to dodge a deathday.
Until the day she does.
Court Icecastle knows wealth. He also knows pain. Spending five years in Vorkter Prison, a fortress of ice and suffering, he dreams of life beyond the people that haunt him and the world that imprisoned him.
Mykal Kickfall fights for those he loves. The rugged Hinterlander shares a frustrating yet unbreakable connection with Court—which only grows more lawless and chaotic as their senses and emotions connect with Franny.
With the threat of people learning they’ve dodged their deathdays, they must flee their planet to survive. But to do so, all three will have to hide their shared bond as they vie for a highly sought after spot in the newest mission to space. Against thousands of people far smarter, who’ll live longer, and never fear death the way that they do.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgalley. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
TW: Drug use
I fell in love with the concept of The Raging Ones immediately. A society where everyone knows the day they will die? Sign me up. And what I love is how Richie & Ritchie consistently play with our expectations regarding the deathdays. It creates an atmosphere where people are viewed as what they can offer the society – where people can die as babes, in their teens, and ones who will vastly outlive the others. A society where we treat these people differently, new social classes, and how they all view their agency, death, and future.
Deathdays and Agency
It’s a society where our lives have expiration dates, where we don’t worry about dying early because we have a certainty in where our end lies. Those who tempt fate, those who focus on how they want to die, and more. So it becomes even more important when Franny, Court, and Mykal dodge their deathday. It brings up questions about how and why they escaped, but larger questions. What does it say about their society and their perception of deathdays? But even more telling, what has it told them about how they were living their lives? As they look out at the world like ghosts.
Characters
And amongst all these questions, Ritche & Ritchie introduce some fascinating characters. The guarded and ambitious Court, the rough around the edges Mykal, and the newest member, Franny. Court’s desire and secretive past, Mykkals honesty and desire to live apart from convention, and Franny’s confusion which mirrors our own. We learn their secrets as they find it impossible to keep secrets from each other. Their relationship not only tests each of them – their expectations and desires – but also forces them to re-evaluate their future.
The Raging Ones asks us what we would do if our future was uncertain? The fear, doubt, and infinite possibility. And then by the end, The Raging Ones builds into so much more – taking a galactic turn where the end will leave you screaming. It’s a story that asks us to take a second chance on the people we write off even when they are staring back at us in the mirror.
Find The Raging Ones on Goodreads, Amazon, Indiebound & The Book Depository.