And the other is Regine, a tall black girl who protects the people around her fiercely and does it with sarcasm and snark.īoth these characters are in no way perfect, having 'died' to come to this ruined world. The characters he meets after he 'dies' are easy to connect with and understand, one of them being a small Polish boy called Tomasz who, it seems, is never given the appreciation he deserves. You laugh, cry, smile because you feel like you're there the entire time with Seth, experiencing everything which he does.

I adored More Than This because it was a painfully human book. It is as if humanity just left the world alone to wither away and die while they went off to live in a better online world where life is easier. He cannot find any other signs of life besides a Fox and her kits, a wild Boar which tries to run him down and a few Ducks which flap away as soon as he yells in amazement at seeing them. An entire half of the town has been burned to ashes while the other half is covered in dust and dirt. You aren't informed or told why he moved to America, or why he was in that freezing ocean, you learn these things as Seth remembers them for the first time. As the book progresses you discover things about Seth with him which gives a real sense of being with the character through their journey. When Seth wakes up in the middle of the road he doesn't remember his own name, he doesn't remember where he's from, he doesn't remember his house or family. More Than This is different from most dystopian because it's extremely, bizarrely and utterly human. And nothing has quite touched me in the same way this has. I have read quite a few dystopian novels, definitely not all of the ones out there, but quite a few.

More than this by patrick ness