It is finally my stop on the last day of the blog tour for this quite honestly brilliant duology by Sarah Daniels. I have been eagerly waiting to post my thoughts on these fantastic books. The whole premise is brilliant.

Blurb for The Stranded

Welcome to the Arcadia.

Once a luxurious cruise ship, it became a refugee camp after being driven from Europe by an apocalyptic war. Now it floats near the coastline of the Federated States – a leftover piece of a fractured USA.

For forty years, residents of the Arcadia have been prohibited from making landfall. It is a world of extreme haves and have nots, gangs and make-shift shelters.

Esther is a loyal citizen, working flat-out to have the rare chance to live a normal life as a medic on dry land. Nik is a rebel, planning something big to liberate the Arcadia once and for all.

When events throw them both together, their lives, and the lives of everyone on the ship, will change forever . . .

Blurb for The Exiled

Trust no one.

It is four months since the Arcadia set sail for the first time in forty years. But this wasn’t the freedom the inhabitants were hoping for. Esther Crossland did what she had to do, but it has left a trail of destruction in her wake. Now the wrecked ship is abandoned. Its inhabitants are in exile, trapped in sprawling make-shift shelters made up of warehouse, tents, shipping containers.

Esther and Nik, architects of the rebellion, are on the run. Esther is in hiding, desperate to do something to help her people, and Nik seems to have abandoned all hope, on a journey taking him further and further from home. And neither of them want to face up to their true feelings about one another . . .

Not only that, there is a new villain in town. With the fall of Commander Hadley, it’s left to the ruthless Admiral Janek to deal with the traitors, and her own past is beginning to catch-up with her.

Then the shaky ceasefire negotiated by General Lall, Nik’s mum, falls apart. Nik and Esther find themselves in a world of betrayals and double crossings – a game of power, with no one to trust but themselves.

It’s time for the final showdown.

For my stop I have written two separate reviews as I read both books and once I’d started I found it hard to put them down.

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Title: The Stranded

Written by: Sarah Daniels

Cover Art by: Thomas Walker

Published by: Penguin

After the first few pages of The Stranded I was hooked. This is a fast-paced dystopian that quickly draws you into the world and rooting for the main characters.

The concept is excellent. In 2050 ten cruise ships had left Europe just before a European biological war broke out. Any survivors from the impact contracted the deadly virus contained in the missiles. Unable to go home, the ships were stranded at sea and had hoped to find refuge in the US. Their arrival caused tension and disagreement throughout America some wanted to accept the refuges others thought the threat of contamination and the expense of accepting so many immigrants too great. The areas closer to the where the ships were docked declared themselves independent from the United States and became the Federated States. Forty years later, in 2094, the refugees are still aboard. Aid is minimal. The ships are slowly being cleared and the passengers are being killed, or sent to workcamps run by the prison corporations. The Arcadia is next in line.

This is so realistic. You can imagine this persistent quarantine really happening especially when you consider that in July 2020, there were 67 cruise ships stranded at sea, or in docks around the globe, waiting to finish Covid quarantine. I found it highly believable that a newly formed independent state that sees itself as a separate country from the United States would let the sudden freedom of power and the threat of contamination overwhelm them to create such a repressive regime. The brutality of the Federated States reminded me of Animal Farm by George Orwell in that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

It is written from several points of view in mostly alternating chapters:

• Esther Crossland who is trying to keep her head down so she can graduate earning her place off the ship and to freedom at a Federation medical school on land.
• Nikhil Lall who works in the engine room and is a member of the resistance, led by his mother.
• And Commander Hadley, head of the security force aboard the Arcadia for seventeen years. He is a bitter, cruel man with issues of his own compounded by the fact he is also a victim of the Federated States, as he was placed on the ship as a sadistic punishment.

All the characters are highly believable and well-written. I liked the way Esther’s sister, May, who was training to be a soldier for the Federation is a double agent and Nik’s love interest. I thought the way Esther is reluctantly pulled into the world of the resistance was clever and plausible. Esther’s long-term controlling boyfriend is manipulative and not beyond deceit, hoarding food and encouraging Esther to cheat on her tests to ensure her place in the medical corp. I thought the development of his character and how Esther was torn by her family loyalties, her familiarity to Alex and to do what she knew what right in her heart was well-plotted and credible.

In fact, the whole plot of The Stranded was brilliantly intricate and totally compelling. It is a realistic story of survival, which I found difficult to drag myself away from. I felt lucky I had the sequel ready to dive into when I’d finished the last page.

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Title: The Exiled

Written by: Sarah Daniels

Cover Art by: Señor Salme

Published by: Penguin

Before I started reading The Exiled I was wondering if Sarah Daniels would keep up the momentum and the plot moving forward as well as she did in The Stranded. I was not disappointed. The second in this dystopian duology was just as gripping as the first.

Again it is written in several points of view, that of Esther and Nik again and this time we meet new character Meg and a more devious and cruel antagonist, Javik who we had briefly met in The Stranded.

The book opens in the makeshift cramped camp of the survivors from the crashed Arcadia with alternating chapters from Esther and Meg. The second half of the book is then told from the point of views of Nik who is now working in the Gulf of Mexico cleaning trash from the ocean and Janik who wants the survivors neutralised.

We learn how the events unfolded since Esther crashed the ship into the mainland. Nik and Esther have been exiled from the main resistance headquarters, so Nik left the camp to get away from his mother and her desire to take over as leader of the resistance and Esther is acting as a medic for the other refugees from the Arcadia along with her former teacher, Corporal Harriet Weston (Corp).

The characters of Corp, General Lall and Silas are expanded as we discover their motivations and goals and these effect their actions and the development of the plot. Meg is another great character. Her infatuation for Alex was scary and the way he has manipulated her is true to his own character. Meg’s final heroic actions brought a tear to my eye. I was pleased with the way Alex got his comeuppance in the end. I also liked the introduction of Harveen, Javik’s assistant, and was intrigued by how her life become entangled with the sinister Javik.

Esther has a new love interest in Patrick Huang and the love triangle between them and Nik was well-written but I found myself wanting her to choose Patrick rather than Nik who I still feel was on the rebound from her sister and so them getting together was not a good idea. This logic illustrates how three-dimensional the characters are in that as I read I was trying to advise Esther against Nik all the time knowing realistically the heart wants what the heart wants, so I was fighting a losing battle.

Sarah Daniels has certainly racked up the tension in The Exiled. The shorter chapters made this an even faster, more exciting and breath-taking read than the first book.  Great plot and fantastic characters.

I would highly recommend this duology.

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Sarah Daniels is an ex-archaeologist who escaped academia and now writes stories from her home in rural Lincolnshire.

Her work has been published in various online magazines and has been nominated for best British and Irish Flash Fiction and Best Small Fictions. 

To find out more about Sarah and her books you can view her website:  http://www.sarahdanielsbooks.com. You can also follow her on Instagram: @sarahdanielsbooks, TikTok: @sarahdanielsbooks and Twitter: @sarahdanbooks.

You can read more reviews of The Stranded and The Exiled by following the links below:

The Stranded on Amazon The Exiled on Amazon

The Stranded on Goodreads The Exiled on Goodreads

I would like to thank Dave from The Write Reads not only for inviting me on this blog but also for inviting me into the fabulous Write Reads community. Thank you.