Welcome to The Undying Tower, dysoptian YA fiction at its best and getting a well deserved re-publish under a new publisher that will hopefully put it on the map and allow audiences to finally get the full trilogy.

With echoes of The Hunger Games and Divergent series, we are introduced to the Avalonia Zone, an area made up of multiple territories including what was once Great Britain. It's a society in crisis after the discovery that a small percentage of the population has stopped ageing causing massive overpopulation, and food shortages, ultimately causing the ‘Undying’ to be blamed for the state’s problems, banished to the fringes of society, and punished for every minor infraction. Following an explosion at a Correction (public execution), 16 year old Sadie Abbott has found herself being named a Terrorist and the leader of the explosion plot and has been transported to The Tower, a corrections centre for Undying youth with a mission to route out the rebel leaders. As she digs deeper into life at the centre and comes to know her fellow inmates she soon realises that everything is not as it seems and there is a far darker undercurrent running through the centre's acts and deeds.

What follows is a truly engrossing story of a small band of unlikely allies trying to uncover the secrets of the centre which ultimately go to the heart of Avalonia society and trying to figure out how on earth they can escape with their lives.

Honestly, this book had me in its grip from word one. I love dysoptian, post-apocalyptic fiction and Melissa Welliver delivers us a complete and complex world that unfolds to us as readers gradually throughout the story. The world building is thorough but not laden with bulky exposition. We're given enough throughout the story to build a rich and vivid pictures as the action develops simultaneously. We're also given characters we want to root for and come to care about quite quickly. Sadie, our main character is a initially shown as being a naïve and young teenager who is smart and caring but who can adapt and learn in order to survive and her band of allies in The Tower are also generally well realised and give you enough hooks to care about them (especially Freya).

The story itself is strong - adventurous, bleak, sad, tense and violent. It moves along at a breathless pace and you can't stop reading as you want to see how things shake out and see who survives and who doesn't. There's a little repetition in some scenes but that also works well to reflect the confusion and uncertainty our characters are facing. As the opening book of a trilogy though it's a well balanced story arc that leaves a lot of room for the remaining books to tell the whole story whilst also being pretty satisfying as a book by itself.

I for one can't wait to see how things pan out in Books 2 and 3 and hope to see more of the Undying society to explore further the more profound questions the situation brings about what it is to potentially live forever and also what it is to live in a discriminatory and inequal society where you hold so little power.

Highly recommended for fans of dystopian, science fiction and post apocalyptic fiction.

4.25*

Thank you to NetGalley and UCLan Publishing for a digital review copy of "The Undying Tower" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.