Review for The Feral Sentence, by G.C. Julien
The Feral Sentence by G.C. Julien introduces a world of merciless, horrific creatures and animalistic humanity. Brone, a young prisoner who is sentenced to death on an uncharted island, must fight for her survival in the jungle. However, soon she begins to change, losing her own humanity with each passing day, as the life she used to know is slowly forgotten, replaced by blood and uncertainty.
The book is separated into four parts. The first part deals with Brone, a young woman who was convicted of first-degree murder. She is thrown onto the island, where she meets a group of survivors. She gets accustomed to the island, all the while reminiscing on aspects of her old life, and how much she had taken for granted. The second part follows Brone’s developing relationships with the women around her, as she foreshadows the chaos that is about to ensue. The third part addresses Brone realizing her place with her newfound society, and that by becoming one of them, she finds herself missing less and less of her old life. Finally, in part four, she once again needs to deal with a drastic, much darker change when she steps up and becomes a leader to the remaining survivors, whether she wants to or not.
Julien clearly demonstrates just how much Brone grows as a character. She takes us through a remarkable journey, from the time she’s literally forced onto the island, to her dealing with a new social hierarchy and the brokenness of the systems, both on the island and the outside world. Though Brone acts as the audience surrogate at the beginning of the novel, by the end she grows into her own character. Over and over again Brone illustrates the cruel fate she’s dealt with. However, she also gains respect throughout the book, because no matter what’d happened, she forced herself to get back up on her feet and to continue living. She’s fed up with the abuse, and decides to take control of the life she’s given, never minding the fact she maintains a precarious existence between her feral instincts and human compassion.
Her development also leads to an interesting blend of themes that interact not only just with Brone, but also with her relationships, the setting, and the plot. The fact that the government was so corrupted that they would willingly leave prisoners to fend for themselves on an obviously dangerous island, as well as just drop a tiny girl with Aspergers in said island, is animalistic of its own. It reminds me of social Darwinism, a concept that has been used many times over to try and justify massacres in human history. I enjoyed how Julien employed that same kind of idea here, giving the women yet another thing in common, and another reason why they need to stick together, since the world has literally abandoned them.
Another concept I found incredibly interesting was the extraordinarily thin boundary between animals and humans. Throughout the story, Brone encounters a variety of women that range from fully functional, to just plain insane. Cannibalism, massacres, territory wars; even Brone feels more feral than she should, and she knows it. However, it’s ironic; if Brone wants to remain human, she would have to stay with these women. As Brone has witnessed, humans are social beings; we need each other if we want to survive.
I enjoyed how Julien unveiled Brone’s story. However, despite that there were still a few spacing and punctuation errors in the book. Nevertheless, the plot, themes, setting, and characters all beautifully work together. Overall, I would give this book a rating of 4.5/5 stars, and would recommend it for anyone who enjoyed moral complexities, the horror and dystopian genre, or people who just love a good scream.
