After reading Hunger, I waited so very anxiously for this book. The premise, teens expressing the (unfortunate) traits that relate to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are selected and fumble their way through accepting the job, is fascinating and Kessler’s writing is utterly enthralling.

In Rage we are introduced to Missy, a young woman who is driven to cutting herself to maintain control of her excessive emotions. She is afraid of losing control. High School is swamped with emotion, and much of it can be difficult for anyone to process with grace, much less someone who already has a tendency towards self harm. At a party Missy is humiliated past all hope of control by an ex boyfriend, she flees and cuts. When Death offers Missy the Sword of War in the aftermath, she accepts and then has to come to terms with the spirit of War who is not at all concerned with the control so precious to her.

Rage deals with the cutting issue without allowing that to take the readers’s focus away from the story. All of Missy’s actions feel true to the character Kessler is sharing with us and not like recitations of symptoms from a medical manual. Missy’s issues support the novel, but are not the singular driving force.

Rage is a sequel in theme to Hunger, but they are wonderfully unique from each other. I felt Rage to be the stronger novel. I could not put Hunger down, and it hurt in all the right ways, but it focused much more on the eating disorders and their fall out and the plot seemed to roll out in the background. Kessler is tackling some rough, important topics and weaving them into something accessible, something stealthily informative. It is a brilliant project and I highly recommend reading.