Horror Book Review - M R Carey - The Girl With All The Gifts

Tweet

Spoiler alerts – 2014 – Orbit Books Recently filmed with a script by the author (also a leading comics writer) this is a real can’t put this one down read. It is a zombie work with a difference as some of the children who are among the ‘Hungries’ as they are called, have stayed intelligent. Melanie, the brightest of them all, goes to school, though under armed guard and having to be tied up and gagged like Hannibal Lector during her lessons. Melanie loves her main teacher, Miss Justineau, but she is frightened of the science lady, Caldwell, who wants to dissect Melanie in the hope of finding a cure for the Hungries. When the school-bunker is attacked by marauding Junkers (humans who kill the living and Hungries alike) Melanie, her teacher, Caldwell, and two army soldiers are forced on a dangerous road trip together, just as the Hungries begin to mutate into strange fungal flowering shrubs. Each character retains his or her own agenda, with Melanie strangely reluctant to escape even when given opportunity to do so – what she is really up to proves to be a major surprise and shock to everyone, including the readers. Fantastic, credible characterization – this is far removed from The Walking Dead. The Hungries are probably such different zombies that they might not be zombies at all. Arthur Chappell