The Dead by Charlie Higson

Summary:

The disease only affects people fifteen or older. It starts with the symptoms of a cold. Then the skin begins to itch, and spots appear--spots that soon turn into pus-filled boils. But the worst part is the headache, the inner voices that tell you that you need to eat them . . . the young ones.

When the Disaster strikes, the world turns upside down for Ed, Jack, Bam and the other students at Rowhurst School. The parents and older siblings they left back at home are dead--or worse. Once the teachers go on the attack, the kids know it's time to escape and make their way to the city.  It's got to be better in London . . .
or will it be worse?
Review:
If your looking for a sequel to The Enemy, you're in the wrong place. "Why?" you may ask, "I thought this was book 2 of the series." Well, you're right about it being book 2 of the series, but it's not a sequel. It's a prequel, with all the events taking place a year before those of The Enemy and a whole different cast of characters. The lone connection with the plot of The Enemy shows up in The Dead's epilogue. Make sense?
Before I get into the meat of this review, I must ask why in the world they put a review quote from FHM on the cover. FHM is a freaking MEN'S MAGAZINE (and by "men's" I DON'T mean a magazine about cars, video games, or guns) and yet they put a review quote from it on a book meant for children/teenagers/minors. There is something seriously wrong with that...
The Dead also has the uber-cheesy promotional descriptors that The Enemy did - "heart-stopping", "jaw-dropping", "nail-biting", "mind-blowing", etc. Puh-lease. Those words make these books out to be so much more than they actually are. Geez. If they cut down the cheesiness factor I might be able to take the covers of these books seriously for once.
While I'm at it, the author bio finishes with "Charlie... is hoping to give a great many young people sleepless nights with this series." Fat chance of that happening. These books just aren't scary. Period. Why do they bother making them out to be? Robin Parrish's Nightmare was a scary book. It almost gave nightmares (pun intended). It kept me awake in the dark, frightened of what might be out there. These books? I slept like a baby.
Anyways, enough about the cover. Moving on...
The Dead  has most of the problems endemic to this series (read: alot of problems got carried over from The Enemy) - the childish language, the anticlimatic-ness the lack of very fast pacing and high intensity. In some ways, though, these problems weren't as bad in The Dead as they were in The Enemy. The childish language was slightly less prevalent, there was a more of a definable climax - just not a very strong one, and there was a slightly faster pace and noticeably higher intensity. The Dead also didn't have an action-heavy half and a dystopian-heavy half like in The Enemy - both elements were spread fairly evenly throughout the book.
The biggest thing keeping The Dead from a higher rating than The Enemy is the formulaic-ness of the thing. The plot of The Dead followed the EXACT SAME pattern/formula as The Enemy with little noticeable differences:

1. Group of kids leave their old hideout in search of better prospects in central London
2. Adults pick off kids throughout the journey
3. Kids arrive at a far more secure location in central London than the one they left. The kids at the secure location have a far better organized system of government than they do
4. Kids go on a dangerous assignment for the kids at the secure location
5. Kids are forced to leave secure location for some reason
6. A protagonist dies somewhere between the beginning and the end.
7. The End

 Now in The Dead Higson successfully used co-protagonists, so there was no huge void left by the one that died but it still felt like a carbon copy of The Enemy. I know he's capable of better because Young Bond was not formulaic in the least.
I also didn't exactly like that there was a completely new cast of characters brought into the picture. It would have been way better to talk about the origins of the Holloway crew, if Higson really wanted to do a prequel that bad, since we already know them quite well but writing it the way he did, it's like he started all over, adding to the whole "carbon copy" feel. In the end it kind of feels like the The Enemy was meant to be a stand alone and he wanted to continue the series to make more money so he wrote The Dead which is basically another stand-alone taking place in the same apocalyptic future as The Enemy.
All in all, even with all my ranting, this wasn't THAT bad a book. Beyond that, all I can conclude with is the conclusion my review for The Enemy - there is nothing different to be said:

"[In The Enemy] Higson didn't make too many mistakes, but he also didn't take too many risks or  make the book as good as it could have been. In the end, its original/creative premise is one of the only things that makes it stand out from all the other dystopian novels crowding YA shelves today. Recommended to fans of dystopian or zombies."

 3.5/5 stars