Outpost

Deuce has been living topside in Salvation for months, but struggles to get used to life there. Everything is different from how she should act to the limited freedoms she has and it's difficult to adjust to being treated like a child again. In addition to all this, Fade, Deuce's best friend and Hunter partner, has pulled away from her, leaving her lonely and misunderstood. Stalker is the only other person who knows what she went through and they don't feel the same about each other. Deuce volunteers for guard duty during the summer to protect the farmers while they work. The Freaks have been displaying disturbing behavior that imply a change toward more intelligence, planning, and ability to strategize. Can Deuce help save Salvation while they continue to belittle and discount her point of view?

Outpost picks up where Enclave left off: with Deuce, Wolf, and Fade adapting to life in Salvation. Where the Enclave kept artifacts away from their people to keep them ignorant and afraid, Salvation uses religion to enforce rigid gender roles. Both societies spun the end of the world in their own way to keep fear alive in their people. Deuce, as a kickass Huntress, doesn't fit in because she has survived her society's transition from childhood to adulthood. Reverting back to having no rights or privileges is also weird after surviving in the wild, fighting against Freaks, and making lifechanging decisions for herself. I understand her and feel her frustration except for her "I'm not like other girls" syndrome seen way to often in teen books. She learns to value other women and their different abilities, especially her adoptive mother. This leads to her acclimating to a different type of Huntress: one who not only fights fiercely, but has the ability to love as well.

This installment had more of a love triangle than the first, which annoyed me. Stalker loves Deuce, but she loves Fade. Fade is insufferable as he stays away from Deuce out of jealousy since she's kept her friendship with Stalker. I don't like the weird possessive attitude on both boys' parts that came out of nowhere, which is another toxic teen novel trope. When Deuce and Fade's relationship gets more serious, she still retains her independence. As the book went on, the love drama took less precedence as the Freaks became more and more threatening.

The more intelligent behavior of the Freaks seen underground in the previous book extends to more of them in this book. They use strategy and leave mutilated bodies in a gruesome warning. Emotion affects them as they attacked sometimes out of revenge. Deuce eventually invenstigates their camp and sees an organized society with housing, children, cooking, and other markers of a civilized society. It's also shown that Freaks have children and don't turn humans to make Freaks. They are mutants, not zombies, which disappoints me. I wish this would have been clear in the first book instead of stringing zombie fans along.

Outpost has many good qualities like calling out societies that manipulate their people, rejecting rigid gender roles, and Deuce's journey throughout the book. The not so great parts include the love triangle (so tired), Fade's toxic behavior (rejecting her for no reason and acting possessive), and Freaks not being zombies. I will be continuing the series, but I hope the first two flaws work themselves out.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins