Review: Rage Within

Rage Within (Dark Inside #2) by Jeyn Roberts
Published September 4, 2012 by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Amazon | Book Depository

Rage Within is the sequel to Dark Inside, so you might not want to read this review if you’ve not read the first one. My review for Dark Inside can be found here.

Aries, Clementine, Michael, and Mason have survived the first wave of the apocalypse that wiped out most of the world’s population and turned many of the rest into murderous Baggers. Now they’re hiding out in an abandoned house in Vancouver with a ragtag group of fellow teen survivors, trying to figure out their next move.

Aries is trying to lead, but it’s hard to be a leader when there are no easy answers and every move feels wrong. Clementine is desperate to find her brother Heath, but it’s impossible to know where he’d be, assuming he’s alive. Michael is haunted by the memories of his actions during his harrowing struggle to survive. And Mason is struggling with something far worse: the fear that he may be a danger to his friends. As the Baggers begin to create a new world order, these four teens will have to trust and rely on each other in order to survive.

♥♥♥

This book starts off several weeks before the disastrous earthquakes, to show a little more into the lives of Aries, Clementine, Michael, Mason, and even Daniel (I got really excited over that part!). At first this glimpse into the time before just added to my confusion about the darkness and how it came about I kept second guessing what I thought I’d figured out in the last book. Once the book returns to the current day, the group has taken up residence in Vancouver for good trying to survive as the Baggers become more organized at rounding up people and it becomes more obvious that they have a plan for everyone still alive.


The romantic relationships in this book got some great development which I love as I am a big time shipper. Michael and Clementine were a welcome relief from the love triangle of Daniel/Aries/Mason. I’m always so wary of triangles, but fortunately the plot didn’t end up revolving around this much. The reason this book really sucked me in though was in the way it presented the ever popular topic of what makes someone evil. Several points are made on how the Baggers are being controlled, but it also seems more and more likely that there might have been something in those people that made them more inclined to become Baggers. This is the kind of book I could have written a paper on in the only philosophy class I took in college if the teacher would have allowed it. Some of the things the Baggers can do aside from straight brutality and killing were seriously freaky and I regretted reading this so late into the night.