The Girl With All the Gifts

The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (2014)

After reading a book about a haunted house (sort of) I moved right on to zombies. I didn't know it was zombies actually, or I probably wouldn't have picked it. But I got sucked in right away and by the time I figured out what it was about, I was too invested in these characters.

At any rate, the story begins with a girl named Melanie. She lives in a cell, and when she is taken out to go to class, it is with a gun pointed at her head while she is strapped into a wheelchair. She remains restrained while in class with other children who are also highly restrained. After class she goes back to her cell. Once a week she's fed a bowl of grubs. She doesn't seem especially upset at her circumstances, as this life is all she's known. She loves one of her teachers a lot, Miss Justineau. The only dark spots are when on occasion another child disappears and is never seen or spoken of again.

But this life is disrupted, and the story changes. I liked the beginning a lot - it reminded me of the early part of A Closed and Common Orbit. Then it became an "on the run" kind of book. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not my kind of thing. I used to watch The Walking Dead and the constant running and state of high alert just made me exhausted. So this book also made me a little exhausted. Still, I had to keep going to find out how it all ended.

I was intrigued by the author's idea of there being different kinds of zombies. Melanie is a special kind: she has the blood thirst and whatnot, but she's also smart and empathetic. She also has a great deal of strength and speed, which come in handy. She's a pretty powerful character all around.

I don't want to say too much about what happens in the story, but I will say that Melanie is on the run with several other characters that include her teacher, Miss Justineau, a research scientists, and a couple of military men. It's an interesting assortment, and one of the strengths of this novel was the way their interests all competed with one another, but that they had to work together as a team to survive.

It was only after I finished that I realized this is the first in a series. My heart sunk a little because, ugh, another series. But the ending was satisfying enough that I don't feel like I need to continue. At the same time, I'm intrigued enough about what happens next that I like knowing I can find out if I want to.