*Review* Inhuman (Fetch #1) by Kat Falls

Inhuman is set in a world where a virus that was genetically manipulated to create a new species of animal, mutated and ravaged the US leaving 40 percent of the population of the US dead or turned into mutants. Now, the survivors (who apparently only live in the West) are forced into living in walled cities, while still others manage to somehow survive day by day in the desperation known as the "Feral Zone" wondering if they will be the next to be infected with the virus.

The protagonist of Inhuman is 16 year old Delaney "Lane" McEvoy. Lane lives in the walled city of Davenport free of viruses and mutants. Her father, Ian McEvoy, is a Fetch, or a person who sneaks into the Dark Continent to retrieve items for individuals looking for momentos, or family members who may have been infected and turned into "manimals' by the rabies virus. Ian trained Lane from an early age how to survive which comes in handy when she finds herself being manipulated into traveling to Chicago, a city that has been overrun with manimals, in order to find a personal item or her father faces severe consequences.

It was interesting watching Lane's character transform from a carefree person who has been told stories by her father for years about the Feral Zone but has never had anything to worry about until the Biohazard Director comes knocking on her door and tears her world apart. She goes from a person who is so serious about keeping germs away from her that she carries a bottle of hand sanitizer with her, to a person who isn't afraid to get down and dirty and bloody and does what she has to in order to survive. Lane's only apparent fault is not seeing the danger that she is surrounding by while letting things get a bit out of hand before realizing that she needs to be more focused.

By the time the story ends, Lane not only grows by leaps and bounds, but she also manages to somehow meet two totally different male characters in Rafe, and Everson Cruz who couldn't be more different and that had me wondering if a 3 way triangle is really necessary for the overall reader satisfaction. Rafe is a thief, and trained with Lane's father for years hearing all sorts of stories about the girl behind the wall. He also hunts rogues for a living and doesn't seem to mind living among the manimals or making Lane squirm every time they are together. Everson is the poetic and social justice character who knows that he can help save the world and maybe find a cure to the virus if only he had a way to collect all the samples in the "Feral Zone." While neither characters is a bad match for Lane, there is always the element of surprise and wonderment if either will actually survive without being infected and transformed into a manimal.

Inhuman is the first book in the Fetch series and I really wonder where this story will go from here especially with the sort of cliffhanger ending that leaves you hoping that Lane makes the right choices. As I was nearing the end of the story, most, if not all of my questions were answered, and the antagonist had been defeated in a most brutal fashion. Of course, one of the characters fate is left hanging in the balance and you wonder where an obviously determined Lane is going to go from here.

Author - Kat Falls
Title - Inhuman (Fetch # 1)
Publisher - Scholastic
Released - September 24, 2013
Genre - YA, Dystopian
Recvd via Netgalley from publisher