Blade: Enemies by Tim Bowler

Meet Blade. But be careful. You may not like what you see. He’s dangerous. He needs to be. Because there people who want him dead.

It’s dog eat dog in his world. Win or die. He thought he was safe. But now they’ve found out where is. And they’re coming.

I will just state for the record that I am a massive Tim Bowler fan. I love what he does with ordinary words – he puts them together in such a way that they weave a compelling narrative that sucks you in keeps you gripped to the very end.

I am by nature a law-abiding citizen, I have respect for the organs of state and that includes the police force. Yet by the close of the first chapter of Enemies, I had developed such a hatred of the policeman that was grilling a young Blade in the lock up that I was hoping he would get shanked. In five pages Mr Bowler made me identify with a seven year-old and turned me into a police-hating Blade fan.

The rest of the book was even better! Terse, exciting prose with a protagonist that broke the fourth wall and addresses the reader throughout the novel, cluing us in to what he is doing and why. It is quite possible that blade is an unreliable narrator, he openly admits to being a liar and gives us the choice to follow him or wig out and let him go his own way.

We have all seen or know teenagers like Blade, hard, solitary beings who want or need no-one, at least on the surface. Enemies lets us in to Blade’s thoughts and shows us his distrust and loneliness. Enemies is a brilliant set-up to a series, Blade has many powerful enemies but we do not know who they are or why they are following him, we do not even know who he really is or what he has done.

Enemies is noir for teenagers, Blade is no Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe but he has his own moral code and although his instincts warn against it he cannot turn away a damsel in distress even though the forces arrayed against him are cast and powerful.

Enemies is the beginning of an epic quest set against the dirty streets of a modern world, where a boy must stand alone to stay free and battle against his darker instincts that threaten to drag him down!

Enemies was previously published in two parts as Blade: Playing Dead and Blade: Closing In.