The Fire Sermon
BORN AS TWINSRAISED AS ENEMIESBOUND BY DEATHCass is born a few minutes after her brother, Zach. Both infants are perfect, but only one is a blessing; only one is an Alpha.The other child must be cast out. But with no discernible difference, other than their genders, their parents cannot tell which baby is tainted.Perfect twins. So rare, they are almost a myth. But sooner or later the Omega will slip up. It will eventually show its true self. The polluted cannot help themselves.Then its face can be branded. Then it can be sent away.
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HarperVoyager
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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015
Copyright © De Tores Ltd 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover illustration and title typography created by Alexandra Allden
Other cover images © Shutterstock.com (additional figure and tree features)
Francesca Haig asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007563050
Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780007563074
Version: 2016-03-10
âThis terrific set-up spools out into a high-tension tale of mistrust and dependency, injustice and optimism, told with poetic intensityâ
Daily Mail
âHaigâs post-apocalyptic world is colourfully fleshed out, and the conclusion asks us to consider who, really, is the Otherâ
Washington Post
âIt holds a mirror up to our obsession with perfectionâ
Guardian
âWords like âmasterpieceâ and âinstant classicâ are cliché, but in the case of Francesca Haigâs astounding The Fire Sermon, theyâre the only words to use. Itâs a breath-taking, passionate, absolutely sensational work of imagination, perfectly structured, beautifully written, populated with fabulous characters and packed with intrigue, violence, compassion and underlined by a very important human message that is always present without ever becoming homily. The Fire Sermon is completely without equal â it leaves Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight blah blah-yawn twitching in the dustâ
Starburst Magazine
âA hell of a ride. I would recommend it to anyone I can, regardless of ageâ
JAMES OSWALD
âThis book is a thought-provoking whirlwind of a story, with a fab lead character, grisly politics and brave adventure. I loved it!â
JESSIE BURTON
This book is dedicated, with love and admiration, to my brother, Peter, and my sister, Clara. Knowing how much they mean to me, it should come as no surprise that my first novel is about siblings.
Iâd always thought they would come for me at night, but it was the hottest part of the day when the six men rode onto the plain. It was harvest time; the whole settlement had been up early, and would be working late. Decent harvests were never guaranteed on the blighted land permitted to Omegas. Last season, heavy rains had released deeply buried blast-ash in the earth. The root vegetables had come up tiny, or not at all. A whole field of potatoes grew downwards - we found them, blind-eyed and shrunken, five feet under the mucky surface. A boy drowned digging for them. The pit was only a few yards deep but the clay wall gave way and he never came up. Iâd thought of moving on, but all the valleys were rain-clogged, and no settlement welcomed strangers in a hungry season.
So Iâd stayed through the bleak year. The others swapped stories about the drought, when the crops had failed three years in a row. Iâd only been a child, then, but even I remembered seeing the carcasses of starved cattle, sailing the dust-fields on rafts of their own bones. But that was more than a decade ago. This wonât be as bad as the drought years, we said to one another, as if repetition would make it true. The next spring, we watched the stalks in the wheat fields carefully. The early crops came up strong, and the long, engorged carrots we dug that year were the source of much giggling amongst the younger teenagers. From my own small plot I harvested a fat sack of garlic which I carried to market in my arms like a baby. All spring I watched the wheat in the shared fields growing sturdy and tall. The lavender behind my cottage was giddy with bees and, inside, my shelves were loaded with food.
