"I remembered my name – Mara. But, standing in that ghostly place, faced with the solemn young man in the black coat with silver skulls for buttons, I could recall nothing else about myself.And then the games began.
The Messenger sees the darkness in young hearts, and the damage it inflicts upon the world. If they go unpunished, he offers the wicked a game. Win, and they can go free. Lose, and they will live out their greatest fear.
But what does any of this have to do with Mara? She is about to find out . . ."
It starts off with Mara waking up in mist and confusion and a lot of where-the-heck am I. We get to piece the story together as we go.
Our narrator, Mara, meets this creepy ageless person called Messenger. He's a bit standoffish, but you learn he's actually quite sweet and thoughtful as you go along and I quite liked his quiet mysteriousness.
Mara is...memoryless. She's steady, pretty smart, Asian, and has a relatively calm character. Until she realises a few key facts.
1. What terrible things Messenger does.
2. Discovers she's supernatural now. Walk through walls, pop around time. All that funky stuff.
3. When she figures out she's his apprentice? Well...then she bursts out sobbing.
There was a bit too much focus on her angst, but she reacted pretty much the way I'd expect someone to react if they woke up and were forced to passively watch as people were tortured. Something about her portrayal resonated with me.
Knowing a little about Michael Grant this isn't an action-packed boy book which I was expecting. The pace is brisk, but not rapid-fire and very limited action while not being boring. There is also no main antagonist. This is more philosophical book, the kind that aims to be a deep exploration of morality. The plot follows three different sets of people with three different stories, and we see as the Messenger decides to punish one person from each story.
The Messenger of Fear takes contemporary, supernatural and horror and melds them together. The writing is crisp, makes you root for the characters and has a good plot twist at the end. The Messenger's justice is harsh but as I read some pages, there were people I wanted punished, but not that harshly and there were people I pitied and felt scared for.
It really highlights that unkindness can have a huge effect on a person and you don't always know what else is going on in a persons life, so be careful...
I would suggest this book to 13+. The punishments are very severe, vividly described and deeply disturbing.
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