Overview

The girl's English accent was flat, exhausted. Like she didn't expect anyone to care about what she was saying; like she wasn't sure why she was bothering at all. But then, she was British - and, apparently, Northern. And something terrible was happening in the North, and if she was thinking nobody had come to their rescue so far, she was right.

It's 2034 and the United Kingdom is no more. Now there is only North and South, and the vast concrete Wall that separates the two.

A group of misfit outcasts have saved the North from annihilation - and started an unwinnable war with the brutal, totalitarian Board. Two months later, as the future grows ever bleaker, a mysterious international agency offers a final glimmer of hope.

But the Agency may not be all it seems, and the gang are still reeling from the fallout of their original mission as they wrestle with old demons and fraying loyalties. Plus there's still the small matter of having a government to overthrow...

It turns out starting the fight is one thing. Finishing it is a whole different story.

Content & Trigger Warnings

The BLACKOUT duology is set in a near-future dystopia and addresses a number of themes and issues that readers may find distressing or triggering. I encourage readers to please be mindful of your own needs and exercise self-care.

SPARKS content and trigger warnings

• Viewpoint character with OCD (fears of contamination/associated rituals/obsessive worries & intrusions about contamination and harm to others)
• Viewpoint character with PTSD related to violent deaths of family members – narrative contains one flashback to the event and depiction of dissociative experiences)
• Characters discuss deaths of family members (parents and siblings); themes around processing loss, grief and uncertainty
• Scenes involving violent deaths and one death from illness/infection
• Some non-graphic references/allusions to past sexual abuse and the character’s behavioural and emotional reactions to this
• Scenes of physical and psychological torture
• Scene depicting critical injury of a main character
• References to past experiences of domestic abuse (parent to child)

About Kit Mallory

Kit has been writing since she was old enough to hold a pen. Kit Mallory lives in Bath, UK, and writes YA speculative fiction about underdogs, kickass girls who like to kiss other girls, and mental health. Her debut novel Blackout was shortlisted for the 2016 Mslexia Children's Novel Competition and longlisted for the 2016 Bath Children's Novel Award. She was almost certainly a mermaid in a former life. When she’s not writing, she can generally be found in the sea or on the moors.