The Roar by Emma Clayton

After the Animal Plague, the inhabitants of London built a wall around their city to keep the animals out and the people safe. Mika’s twin sister, Ellie, disappeared and is assumed dead, but Mika refuses to believe it. Things start getting strange when a new arcade opens up in town with an amazingly realistic flying game called Pod Fighter that all the kids become obsessed with. Soon there are Pod Fighter contests, with the winners being promised extravagant vacations and brand new houses. Mika advances in the tournaments, and finds himself in the final rounds, but it soon becomes clear that these contests are testing much more than the children’s abilities in pod fighting…  There have been quite a few futuristic children’s books published in the last couple of years, and this one stands slightly above the others. The action is steady throughout the book, and the dangers facing the children are original. There is some violence and the storyline is dark, so I don’t recommend this book for younger or sensitive children, but for fans of futuristic adventure stories, The Roar is a good bet. Review by Katie Corrigan