To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast arrives as a visceral entry into the dystopian romance landscape, delivering a high-stakes survival narrative wrapped in the provocative premise of entertainment through execution. This debut novel, the first in the Divided Fates series, constructs a world where imprisonment becomes spectacle and escape transforms into revolution.
When Survival Demands Sacrifice
The story centers on Raven Thorne, a bounty hunter who has spent years making impossible choices in Dividium’s harsh Lower Sector. When her younger brother Jed receives a life sentence in Endlock—a prison where the wealthy hunt inmates for sport—Raven makes a decision that defines her character: she deliberately gets herself arrested to save him from within. To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast wastes no time establishing the brutal mechanics of its dystopian society, where three sectors divide humanity and crimes become commodified entertainment.
Fast’s worldbuilding proves both inventive and chilling in its plausibility. Endlock operates as a terrifying fusion of reality television, theme park, and slaughterhouse, complete with gift shops selling branded merchandise and hunters purchasing “budget-friendly packages” for their killing expeditions. The prison’s infrastructure—from the ranking system that determines target value to the meticulously designed hunting grounds—demonstrates thoughtful construction of a society that has normalized atrocity. The author deserves credit for not shying away from the psychological horror inherent in her premise, though she balances this darkness with moments of genuine human connection.
The Architecture of Oppression
What elevates To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast beyond simple survival thriller is its examination of systematic manipulation. The revelation that Dividium’s food shortages were artificially created to drive crime rates—and thus provide more targets for Endlock’s hunters—adds layers of calculated cruelty to the narrative. This conspiracy transforms the story from personal survival tale into an indictment of how authoritarian systems manufacture the conditions they claim to solve. Fast handles this twist with appropriate gravity, allowing readers to understand how Raven’s career as a bounty hunter was itself engineered by the very forces she now fights against.
The Council’s three-sector division creates a hierarchy that feels uncomfortably familiar, echoing real-world class structures while maintaining science fiction’s speculative distance. However, the worldbuilding occasionally suffers from underdevelopment regarding the broader world beyond Dividium’s walls. References to “the world before” and the nuclear devastation that preceded the city’s founding remain frustratingly vague, leaving readers craving more historical context for how humanity arrived at this particular dystopia.
Found Family in the Crucible
The novel’s emotional core lies not in its romance but in the found family dynamics that emerge among the inmates planning their escape. To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast assembles a deliberately diverse group of prisoners:
- August, a doctor wrongfully convicted after failing to save a politician’s life
- Kit, an engineer whose knowledge of Endlock’s security systems makes her invaluable to the resistance
- Yara, an agriculturist grappling with her father’s role in the food shortage conspiracy
- Momo, a twelve-year-old boy arrested for stealing food to feed his siblings
Each character carries both expertise crucial to the escape and emotional wounds from the system that imprisoned them. Fast demonstrates skill in balancing multiple character arcs, allowing secondary characters their own moments of agency and growth rather than relegating them to supporting roles in Raven’s journey. The relationship between August and Momo particularly resonates, offering a surrogate father-son dynamic amid the prison’s brutality.
Yet the characterization occasionally stumbles into familiar territory. Raven’s journey from isolated survivor to community-oriented rebel follows a well-worn path in dystopian fiction, and her initial resistance to trusting others feels more obligatory than organic. The narrative would benefit from deeper exploration of how seven years of bounty hunting shaped her worldview beyond surface-level guilt.
The Guard Behind the Wall
Vale, Endlock’s conflicted guard who becomes Raven’s unlikely ally and love interest, represents the novel’s most complex moral territory. As the son of a rebel father and a Councilor mother, Vale embodies the contradictions inherent in working within an unjust system while trying to subvert it. His relationship with Raven develops through stolen moments and dangerous assistance, creating genuine romantic tension grounded in shared values rather than mere proximity.
The romance in To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast benefits from taking its time to establish trust before passion. Fast wisely focuses on building emotional connection through Vale’s consistent actions—protecting Raven during hunts, providing extra rations, sharing dangerous secrets—before exploring physical attraction. Their relationship reflects the novel’s broader theme: authentic connection flourishes even in environments designed to prevent it.
However, the revelation of Vale’s parentage arrives with insufficient groundwork, feeling more like plot convenience than earned twist. His mother’s position as Councilor Elder grants him access and protection that sometimes strain credibility, and readers may question why a councilor would allow her son to take a position at Endlock given the dangers involved. These logical gaps occasionally disrupt immersion in otherwise gripping sequences.
Pacing the Pressure
Fast demonstrates strong control over narrative momentum, particularly in the novel’s action sequences. The hunts themselves become exercises in sustained tension, with each episode raising the stakes while advancing character relationships and plot machinations. The author balances multiple narrative threads—Raven’s efforts to protect Jed, the group’s escape planning, Raven’s evolving relationship with Vale, and the larger conspiracy against the Council—without losing focus on the immediate survival challenges.
The novel’s structure does suffer from occasional repetition, particularly in the middle sections where multiple hunts begin to blur together despite Fast’s efforts to differentiate them. Some sequences of Raven working in the prison workshop or navigating cellblock politics feel like marking time until the next major plot development. Tighter editing might have compressed these moments without sacrificing character development.
The escape sequence itself, when it finally arrives, delivers satisfying payoff for the extensive preparation Fast has depicted. The use of underground tunnels, drugged guards, and Kit’s technical sabotage combines into a plan that feels both clever and plausible within the established worldbuilding. However, certain elements resolve with surprising ease given the buildup, and readers expecting more complications may find the execution anticlimactic.
Looking Beyond Endlock
To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast ends not with resolution but transition, positioning the escapees at the edge of the Wastes with the North Settlement beckoning in the distance. This choice transforms the novel into a true series opener rather than a standalone story with sequel potential. Readers seeking complete narrative arcs may feel frustrated by the abrupt ending, though it effectively establishes the journey ahead for the Divided Fates series.
The novel succeeds most powerfully in its indictment of systems that profit from human suffering. Fast’s background developing this story from a college creative writing assignment shows in both the concept’s originality and occasional roughness in execution. The prose itself flows smoothly without flourish, serving the story efficiently though rarely memorably. Dialogue feels authentic to each character, avoiding the pitfall of everyone sounding identical despite varying backgrounds.
Final Verdict: A Promising Launch
To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast establishes a foundation worth building upon, introducing compelling characters within a brutal world that demands both resistance and hope. The novel’s blend of dystopian worldbuilding, found family dynamics, and slow-burn romance will appeal to readers who appreciate character-driven survival narratives. While the execution occasionally falters and certain plot elements feel underdeveloped, Fast’s debut demonstrates genuine promise and a willingness to confront difficult questions about complicity, resistance, and the systems that shape our choices.
For readers seeking immersive dystopian fiction with emotional depth, this series opener delivers enough satisfaction to justify the investment while leaving tantalizing threads for future installments to explore.
If You Enjoyed This Book, Try These:
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown – Another exploration of class-based oppression with intense survival elements and found family themes
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – The obvious comparison for its deadly games premise, though Fast’s approach emphasizes prison politics over arena combat
- An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir – Features a similar dynamic of infiltrating an oppressive military system with forbidden romance
- Vicious by V.E. Schwab – For readers drawn to morally complex characters navigating systems of power
- Scythe by Neal Shusterman – Explores how societies rationalize sanctioned killing through institutional frameworks
