Zombies*R*Us - The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey and This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

I like to tell myself I'm not a fan of zombie books because of the gruesome factor but since I've read 4 and own at least 2 more, I very well may be telling myself a fib. Having said that, I didn't know The Girl With All the Gifts was a zombie book, of sorts. All I knew was that it was in some way dystopian and a friend thought it was excellent. And, I happen to trust that friend's judgment. So, I simply dived into the story blind.


From the publisher:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her "our little genius." Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. 

My thoughts:

Melanie is what's known as a "Hungry" in this dystopian zombie book, but the difference between Melanie and the typical zombie is that she has a functioning brain; and, even more than that, she's actually well above average intelligence and has more empathy than most of the humans around her. It's her kindness and humanity that make her a compelling character. But, the fact that the book reads like an action movie makes the pages fly.

The Girl With All the Gifts begins on a military complex. There are Hungries outside the fence, as well as some human survivors who have banded together. I can't recall what the humans were called but they were every bit as terrifying as the Hungries, much like the Reavers in Firefly. When the military complex is overrun, Melanie and a handful of other survivors must band together on their quest for safety. It's been long enough since I read the book that I can't recall the name of the place they originally seek but I think it was called Beacon. The Girl With All the Gifts takes place in England and Beacon is, as I recall, beyond London. London is so huge that there's no way they can avoid going through it; and, where populations are larger, the danger increases. Will Melanie and the remaining humans survive long enough to make it to Beacon? Does Beacon even exist? Is there any hope at all for humanity? What will happen when Melanie begins to understand why everyone fears her?

Hmm, tough questions answered in a painful way. In fact, The Girl With All the Gifts has one of those endings that you'll either love or hate. I had to mull for a time and once I'd pondered it I decided it was rough in its way but not a bad ending so much as one that shakes you up a bit. So, in retrospect, I like it more now than I did when I closed the book. And, in fact, the sheer quantity of action in the book means it's the kind of book I'd enjoy reading a second time.

Recommended to those who like zombies or just favor a plot-driven novel that also contains distinctive characterization. There's plenty of violence and gore, so be forewarned that if you're easily overwhelmed by revolting descriptions, The Girl With All the Gifts can definitely be disturbing. It is, however, a unique story as zombie books go. The cause of the infection that turns humans into hungries is a fungus -- and that makes a surprising difference in how the disease manifests itself, allowing for continuing brain function in some humans who are, for all intents and purposes, no longer alive. I did love the science aspect of this particular novel, which struck me as more plausible than most.

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers is a book I read wholly on the enthusiastic recommendation of a friend. Again. What is it with friends and zombie books?

In this case, however, the enthusiasm had to do with the fact that it was less about zombies than about the characters and their attempt at survival. I tend to like a plot-driven book much more than one that's character-driven but I was curious after my friend Heather gushed about This Is Not a Test, so I added the book to my hold list and it arrived within about a week.

The zombie-inducing disease in This is Not a Test is a fast-moving virus -- so fast that it's hard to fully comprehend how this odd little group ended up banding together. Sloane has ended up with a group of teenagers who managed to find refuge in their high school. They're not all friends and two adults -- the parents of teenage twins among the survivors -- were lost on their quest for shelter. The twins blame one of the other survivors for their parents' death.

Sloane, the narrator, doesn't care. She was planning to commit suicide so she's not even certain why she's bothering to worry about the fact that nobody can sleep because the zombies are banging on the doors of the school. She still wants to die; it's just a matter of when and how. 6 months ago, her sister left home instead of waiting till Sloane's graduation to escape from their abusive father, leaving Sloane to deal with his violent outbursts on her own.

I had mixed feelings about This is Not a Test. There's really never any point at which the characters really get along. They manage to stick together in a loose way, carefully doling out the food and drinks in the school kitchen, and there are couplings and spats that fit the typical interactions within their age range. But, when an injured man calls for help outside the school and someone shows up inside, in spite of the fact that they're certain they have all the entrances blocked, things go completely haywire. When a faint radio signal informs them that there is, in fact, a place they can find other survivors, will they decide to take their chances outside the school? Is it even possible for anyone to survive out there?

Recommended but not a favorite - If you like zombie books and/or character-driven stories, this might be the book for you. But, I have to admit there was never a time I fully felt invested in This is Not a Test. I could understand Sloane's disinterest in survival but the emotional ups and downs, the waffling about whether or not to trust each other . . . I guess it just wasn't my thing. I liked the book enough to keep going and I think it was well-written. It was just more of an emotional book than an action book and I prefer fast-paced books when it comes to dystopian reading.

Oddly, I gave both of these books (both checked out from the library) 4 stars. In hindsight, I'd bump up The Girl With All the Gifts to 5 stars and knock This is Not a Test down a peg, if only for the fact that the former has stuck with me and I don't actually recall how This is Not a Test ended. I hate it when I forget an ending.

In other news: I haven't taken a single photo of the cats, this week, but I'll try to dig up an older one for Fiona Friday on the Wrong Day, tomorrow. I just don't think they'd go all that well with zombies, anyway.


©2015 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

 

Reboot by Amy Tintera

Reboot by Amy Tintera

Copyright 2013
Harper Teen - Dystopian
Ages 13 and up
369 pp.

Source:  Harper Collins

Brief summary without spoilers:

In the future, war and a deadly virus have taken a large portion of the population.  When people die of the virus, some of them "reboot" as slightly stronger but less emotional creatures who can only be killed with a bullet to the brain or a serious head injury.  The longer you're dead before you reboot, the less emotional you are.  Wren is a 178 -- dead 178 minutes, very unusual.  She is a slave to the corporation, HARC, and must go on missions to the slums to bring in people with the virus, those who have rebooted but haven't been turned in by their parents and other lawbreakers.

When she's not on a mission, Wren is busy training new reboots.  Usually, Wren chooses the highest-number reboots because they're easiest to train, less emotional, less likely to die or be eliminated for not measuring up.  But, then along comes a 22 named Callum.  Wren decides it might be interesting to see if she's up to the challenge of training such an emotional and slow reboot.  But, when he defies orders and is about to be eliminated at the same time she is asked to rescue a 39 from certain death, Wren realizes escape is their only option.  But, is escape even possible?

What I loved about Reboot:

Reboot is essentially a new twist on the zombie concept and I loved the uniqueness.  The Reboots have died and lost some degree of emotion and humanity but they've gained different abilities like a stronger sense of smell, strength and speed. They're not brain-eating beings but slightly altered humans.  It took a while to wrap my head around the concept of the Reboot but the farther you get into the book, the more it makes sense.

Wren is a kick-ass female archetype; Callum is funny and charming.  And, while Reboot is Wren's story, it's because of Callum that you see the humanity even Wren doesn't realize is left inside of her.  Besides the excellent characterization, Reboot is tremendously fun, with an exceptional balance between action and interaction.  The ending is satisfying and perfectly wrapped up.  The author could easily carry the story forward (I don't know if Reboot will have a sequel) but there's no annoying cliffhanger ending.

What I disliked about Reboot:

The only criticism I can come up with is that the language in Reboot is a bit too simplistic.  I found myself wanting to upgrade words like "mean" or "dumb" to those with more specific meanings and if I'd been her editor or beta reader, would have nudged the author to ramp up the vocabulary a bit.  The reading level, though, does make Reboot an excellent choice for when you need a bit of a mental break, definitely the kind of book I like to read when traveling -- I have a terrible concentration level on vacation.

Recommendation:

Highly recommended, action-packed reading with a solid dilemma, satisfyingly complex plot and a truly lovely romance that builds slowly and believably.  Light, funny, exciting adventure, a strong heroine and a charming hero.  I absolutely adored Callum.  Also, I don't recall any bad language or graphic sex, although there is talk of Reboot sex being a rather mindless hormone-related thing.  I liked how the author treated sexuality and definitely wouldn't have any problem leaving it out where an adolescent could get hold of the Reboot.

In other news:

Our weather has been so unusually pleasant that we've been going to our local baseball games.  It helps that we've moved 30 miles closer to the ballpark, of course.

A baseball bookmark, just for you:

Sports are 1,000 times more fun when you take a camera.  Humble opinion.

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell

The Reapers Are The Angels
by Alden Bell
Copyright 2010
Henry Holt & Company
Horror/Zombies
225 pages

WARNING: This review may contain some spoilers. Read only if you don't plan to read The Reapers Are The Angels, right away (or you're really forgetful).
You have been warned!! Sounds ominous, eh?

. . . you know what my gut tells me? My gut tells me that's my old friend Moses Todd who's got some business he's gonna want to finish up with me. It's a wonder how he's trackin me, but you can't put nothing past these southern boys. They just sit around waiting for somebody to kill their brother so they can get started on some vengeance. It's like a dang vocation with them.

p. 62

I could write this entire review in quotes alone, simply because The Reapers Are The Angels is so beautifully written and utterly profound and even funny, at times -- strikingly literary in tone for a novel about a young teen surviving in a world of zombies, a world where the humans are as much if not more of a danger than the risen dead. But, let me tell you a little bit about it and then I'll besiege you with quotes.

Temple is fifteen years old. The world was overtaken by zombies before she was born. A world dominated by dead people who eat or turn living humans along with a smattering of survivors is all she knows. As a young child, she was trained in survival and at one point she had a young brother to watch over. But, then she was left alone. As The Reapers Are The Angels opens, Temple is living alone in a lighthouse on a small island off the coast of Florida. But, then her safe haven is breeched and she must move on.

Right from the beginning, the reader knows young Temple is no ordinary teenager. She's a survivor but she's also a loner. When she does encounter civilization, things go terribly wrong and she ends up being pursued by a man who is determined to take revenge, even though he knows the crime she committed was an act of self-defense.

The Reapers Are The Angels is a brutal tale that is absolutely startling in the beauty of its telling. It truly blew my mind. I'm pretty sure it's billed as a Young Adult novel and that bothers me because I'd say it's at least R-rated in content. And, yet, it's such an incredible read that I'd probably hand it to my 18-year-old with a warning, if he expressed interest. I'm pretty sure zombies aren't his thing. They're not what I'd call "my thing", either. But, if you can stomach the gore that goes with stinky, rotting zombies and the brutality of people who will do anything to survive, the book is truly a stunning work of craftsmanship that took my breath away. A few more quotes, before I conclude:

Beyond the pursuit of meaning and beyond good and evil too, she says. See, it's a daily chore tryin to do the right thing. Not because the right thing is hard to do--it ain't. It's just cause the right thing--well, the right thing's got a way of eluding you. You give me a compass that tells good from bad, and boy I'll be a soldier of the righteous truth. But them two things are a slippery business, and tellin them apart might as well be a blind man's guess.

p. 107

Fifteen! You're too young to be wanderin the countryside. Too young by a mile.

I tried to be older, she says. But it's something that's hard to force.

p. 168

And she turns her back on the lost and the dead and the trampled down, she leaves them to their airy graves, and she and the big man next to her look upward at heaven and find there not just gates and angels but other wonders too, like airplanes that go faster than sound and statues taller than any man and waterfalls taller than any statues and buildings taller than any waterfall and stories taller still that reach up and hook you by the britches on the cusp of the moon, where you can look and see the earth whole, and you can see how silly and precious a little marble it really is after all.

p. 171

The night comes, and when the sun rises again it rises over a motionless desert, over streets full of rusty, broken-down automobiles, over tumbleweed towns filled with derelict buildings, signposts twisted and bent so that their arrows become nonsensical, pointing into the dirt or up into the sky, billboards whose sunny images and colorful words flap unglued in the breeze, shop windows caked with the grime of decades, bicycles with flat tires abandoned in the middle of intersections, their wheels turning slowly like impotent tin windmills, some buildings charred and burnt out, others half fallen down, multistory tenements split down the middle, standing like shoebox dioramas, pictures still hanging on the upright walls, televisions still in place on their stands teetering over the gaping edge of the floor where the rest of the living room has collapsed to the ground in great mountains of concrete and dust and girder like the abandoned toys of a giant child.

p. 177

The bottom line:

Graphic, violent, brutal, honest and even humorous, at times, The Reapers Are The Angels is, quite simply, a work of art. It is deep, dude -- quite spiritual, in fact. Highly recommended, but be forewarned . . . it's a hard, hard read and it will break your heart. This book gets a family warning for violence and sex. If you're considering handing it to a young adult, I'd advise reading it, first, so you can discuss it with your teen.

In other news:

Two reviews in one day! I think I deserve some kind of reward, like a nice bath with a lavender fizzy. Hope everyone in the Midwest survived today's bizarre weather.

©2010 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Day by Day Armageddon or Pardon me while I bite that juicy ankle of yours and turn you into a zombie . . . by J. L. Bourne

Day by Day Armageddon by J. L. Bourne

Copyright 2009

Pocket Books - Fiction/Horror/Zombies
199 pages

I fell asleep early and woke up late, so I'm not quite finished with this book (and a storm is coming, which means I need to go ahead and write before I must shut off my electronics).

Day By Day Armageddon tells the story of a man in the American military surviving against growing odds. When a plague hits China, American doctors are sent to help determine the cause and stop the plague. But, it quickly becomes apparent that the disease is spreading too rapidly and even the doctors are not returning. Americans are evacuated from embassies in China and other far-east posts, but it's too late. Someone has brought the disease to the United States.

Called in to his military base, the nameless rogue diarist has already been stockpiling Meals Ready to Eat (MRE's), guns and ammunition, water and other supplies he thinks he may need to wait out the spread of the illness. Then, the truth comes out. The plague causes people to die and then come back. Zombies are roaming the streets and they kill with a single bite.

As the book progresses, our hero finds that he is not alone. He and his neighbor John take jaunts out of their homes to acquire food and supplies, then eventually have to leave San Antonio. As the book continues, they slowly pick up more refugees and they're no longer lonely but now they have to deal with the need for more food, more medical supplies, more drinks. Will they survive or is it too late for the few survivors and the world in general?

I flipped to the end of the book because I'm that kind of girl and it turns out the book is "to be continued". So, even if I'd made it to the end before I sat down to write, I know there's more to come.

Written as diary entries, the story is told entirely from our rogue's viewpoint. Harry wrote a fantastic review at Temple Library Reviews. As he mentioned, the nameless protagonist is a bit like McGyver, jerry-rigging devices to keep the zombies out while they forage for food or sleep for the night, hot-wiring cars, creating diversions. I loved that. The book is suitably creepy and sometimes a little gross, with descriptions of rotting flesh -- which, I suppose, you have to expect from a zombie book that takes itself seriously.

The downfall of this book is terrible English. At one point, the protagonist mentions his typos. I'm assuming his entries are typed on a laptop, although there are fake smudges, circles, underlining, etc., in "handwriting"-type script to give it the appearance of having been printed out and remarked upon or added to. Unfortunately, it's not just typos that get in the way of smooth reading. Poor grammar, misused words, misspellings -- you name it, English teachers would have a field day with their red pens (and an editor should have). I'm assuming the idea was to leave it be and make the entries appear genuine, but not editing made the writing very, very rough and sometimes you have to figure out which word is missing or translate the meaning.

Regardless, Day by Day Armageddon is a fun diversion. My son and I had a great conversation about the book, yesterday. I told him it was basically one man against the world and he said, "That would be like Dawn of the Dead." I said, "Really? That's a movie with a rogue hero?" He said yes, and then started to tell me what kind of supplies you need for a zombie invasion and I informed him of what he was forgetting. If you have a teenage boy nearby, preparation for a zombie invasion is a tremendously fun topic. Day by Day Armageddon is not a well-written book, but I like survival and had fun imagining what I would do if I were in our nameless protagonist's place. He doesn't simply hole up in his house for the duration, so there's plenty of action.

3.5/5 - A fun diversion but errors in grammar, spelling, etc. make it hard for a person with an editor brain to get through.

See the little bend in the left-hand side of Mississippi? Mississippi is the state with Jackson as its capital, in case you're not proficient in geography. We're at that bend in the river. I've borrowed this radar snap from Weather Underground to show you what's coming. Yikes. Batten down the hatches! I've got to make a Walmart run, and I think I'd better hurry.

Kitty is on the mend and I should be able to bring her home, this afternoon! Wahoo!!!! Thanks to Sarah Reidy and Pocket books for letting me join in on this tour. Hope everyone has a fabulous day!

Update: Expensive Kitty is home! She looks terrible and appears to be completely blind in her bad eye, at the moment (she's a bit stumbly), but she's obviously glad to be here and is eating well. We only got a little wet. The blustery wind of this morning seems to have petered out when the rain arrived. I've finished the book and toward the end Harry's comments about the book being entirely plot-driven without much depth to the characters has been reinforced but the book is about constantly moving to escape a growing threat so the characters don't necessarily require a great deal of depth. I love the fact that the cast, which grew as Unnamed Protag picked up a few stray humans, seldom stayed in one place for long because it keeps things moving. Hopefully, the publishers will bother editing the second book. All those errors were really annoying, but I still had fun reading and thought it was worth the time.

I neglected to warn that there's plenty of violence, gruesome description and bad language. It's not constant, though. Mostly, it's a story of survival and an entertaining, escapist read.

Update #2: It just occurred to me that since this book is suspenseful and creepy, it qualifies for the RIP IV. All right! Another challenge book down! I'm finally actually succeeding at a challenge!! Party on, dudes.