Enemies lets us in to Blade’s thoughts and shows us his distrust and loneliness. We have all seen or know teenagers like Blade, hard, solitary beings who want or need no-one, at least on the surface. It is quite possible that blade is an unreliable narrator, he openly admits to being a liar and gives us the choice to follow him or wig out and let him go his own way. The rest of the book was even better! Terse, exciting prose with a protagonist that broke the fourth wall and addresses the reader throughout the novel, cluing us in to what he is doing and why.
In five pages Mr Bowler made me identify with a seven year-old and turned me into a police-hating Blade fan. Yet by the close of the first chapter of Enemies, I had developed such a hatred of the policeman that was grilling a young Blade in the lock up that I was hoping he would get shanked. I am by nature a law-abiding citizen, I have respect for the organs of state and that includes the police force. I love what he does with ordinary words – he puts them together in such a way that they weave a compelling narrative that sucks you in keeps you gripped to the very end.
I will just state for the record that I am a massive Tim Bowler fan. Readers who like their thrillers brutally realistic will find much to enjoy. Why should I?”) carries the novel, even as the plot frustratingly ends with a cliffhanger. ) imbues Blade with a voice that throws around slang (“porker,” “gobbo,” “Bigeyes”) without needing to stop to explain it, and his reader-directed narration (“I don't trust you one little bit. There's little joy in Blade's world: characters steal, cheat, abuse drugs and kill, and to Blade, little of this bleakness is out of the ordinary (the first chapter reveals that he's lived this way since at least the age of seven). Along the way, he ends up protecting a toddler named Jaz and the girl's teen mother, Becky (she, in turn, inspires memories of Blade's long-dead love). After Blade suffers a beating by a local gang, an offer of help from a Good Samaritan goes awry and he finds himself on the run from a group of mysterious armed men. Bowler delivers an intense, gripping novel that introduces Blade, a 14-year-old British boy with a mysterious past, who is living on the streets.
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