The title of this book is exactly what you find inside. Aberdeen and the rest of Britain, has been taken over by giant robot chickens, who capture human beings and make them work on farms outside the towns.
Gangs of children roam wild, but this is not Lord of the Flies. It doesn’t try to be insightful literature, more entertaining. The hero, Jesse, is just trying to survive and flits between gangs with The Ambassador, a girl who owes no-one any allegiance and who believes she has found a means of destroying the source of the chickens’ power.
The book might be clever, as in, Â you might take some satisfaction from having chickens free from their battery home existence and ruling the roost (oops sorry) by turning the tables on their erstwhile masters. But with Jesse’s puns no better than mine, it teeters on the brink of being plain silly. I’d be interested to see how many young readers find it slipping the right side.
Yes, all the children are hurting because they have lost a brother or sister or friend, but grief isn’t dealt with here and it’s pretty much plot driven. There are indeed some clever twists to resolve the situation but we never really find out why or how it came about in the first place.
Don’t let me put you off. It’s a good read if you can bear the puns and is available from Amazon for kindle and in paperback
