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Title: The Girl with All the Gifts
Author: M. R. Carey
Genre: Thoughtful horror
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: A little girl lives in a horrifying school, in a world that's not quite what she was first taught. Who is the monster?
Thoughts: Mike Carey has written several excellent comic book series and a good but not particularly challenging urban fantasy/horror series. Here, he's produced something so different in voice that it's not surprising his agent had it marketed under another name.
It's really hard to discuss this without spoilers, although the twist is obvious within a few chapters.
Melanie is a zombie. An intelligent, child zombie in a world where most of the zombies are the stereotypical shambling horrors. She's being studied in a desperate attempt to figure out why she can still think (even though she'll try to bite anything that smells too strongly of human flesh). But just as much as this is a horror novel about survivors of a zombie apocalypse, it's a horror novel about a child experimentation subject.
Very quickly, though, things go even further to hell. And so we take a surprisingly long, thoughtful, poignant journey through the ruins of England. Carey plays this more for moral dilemmas and wistful longing than thrills (although the writing is plenty tense). Some of the prose verges on literary--it certainly is a more elegaic exploration of humanity than you would typically expect from zombie fiction. The ending is brilliant, if deeply disturbing on several levels. This is somehow simultaneously an incredibly sad and incredibly hopeful book. Easily one of the best I've read all year.
Author: M. R. Carey
Genre: Thoughtful horror
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: A little girl lives in a horrifying school, in a world that's not quite what she was first taught. Who is the monster?
Thoughts: Mike Carey has written several excellent comic book series and a good but not particularly challenging urban fantasy/horror series. Here, he's produced something so different in voice that it's not surprising his agent had it marketed under another name.
It's really hard to discuss this without spoilers, although the twist is obvious within a few chapters.
Melanie is a zombie. An intelligent, child zombie in a world where most of the zombies are the stereotypical shambling horrors. She's being studied in a desperate attempt to figure out why she can still think (even though she'll try to bite anything that smells too strongly of human flesh). But just as much as this is a horror novel about survivors of a zombie apocalypse, it's a horror novel about a child experimentation subject.
Very quickly, though, things go even further to hell. And so we take a surprisingly long, thoughtful, poignant journey through the ruins of England. Carey plays this more for moral dilemmas and wistful longing than thrills (although the writing is plenty tense). Some of the prose verges on literary--it certainly is a more elegaic exploration of humanity than you would typically expect from zombie fiction. The ending is brilliant, if deeply disturbing on several levels. This is somehow simultaneously an incredibly sad and incredibly hopeful book. Easily one of the best I've read all year.
