This dystopian novel for adults is long, drawn-out and violent. SEEK THE TRAITOR’S SON starts with a map; I love a fantasy with a map. This sideways look at the globe shows the focal point to be Australia, with an orbiting space station. Other places of interest are Los Angeles and New Guinea / Indonesia. In the story, they are renamed Austra, Losan and Nusanta. Because this is a Mad Max type of future, when records are lost, and a hollow exists where cities and civilisations used to thrive.

Elegy Ahn is part of the Cedrae, who live in these three areas, and aboard the space station. Her people’s enemies are the Talusar, made up of humans who got infected with a Fever. Half of all those affected died. The other half recovered and were given some talent, like precognition. Rava Vidar is a woman general of the Talusar. She seems to be modelled on Attila the Hun. Her people don’t really do tech anymore, and they drove the Cedrae, who were adamant about quarantine, into the three mentioned areas to live separately. But Rava Vidar doesn’t seem to want to stick to her word. Everybody swears, by the way.

I am interested in the space station colony. This refuge is supplied and guarded from southern Austra. People can come and go. However, we spend most of our time in the company of augurs and soldiers, on the arid surface. Elegy, the married daughter of an augur known as the Sword (a woman), is part of a prophecy, and Rava is also affected by it. Somewhat unhappily for feminists, the prophecy concerns an unnamed man. Theren is a young man, trained as a guard, who is the son of people who fled the Talusar just a generation ago. They are not quite trusted, but he grew up as Cedrae, though he still understands his parents’ home language, and agrees to guard Elegy. Let’s say matters go badly wrong.

The Burning Empire series starts with this intense, dark future, and Veronica Roth will be hoping those readers who grew up with her Divergent series will love this one. Now, I enjoyed DIVERGENT completely. But the following books seemed to me to be about nothing except drugs, guns, and discussions on what people had suffered from their parents. Reading SEEK THE TRAITOR’S SON, I found words like death, knife, stab, drug, scar, wound, torture, interrogation, on every page. Nor can it be called a romance as Elegy and Theren are hardly ever in the same room until near the end. I would be quite concerned about the mental health of anyone reading this novel repeatedly. I don’t read horror, so if you do, you might enjoy it more. There’s an alien plant. I like the plant.