Review – The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Post-Apocalyptic
Length: 420 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: June 10, 2014
ASIN : B00CO7FLFG
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Girl with All the Gifts Duology
Source: Borrowed ebook from Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 4/5 stars

“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.”

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in The Girl With All the Gifts duology. I borrowed this on ebook through Kindle Unlimited

Thoughts: I liked this book; it was fast-paced and easy to read. I struggled to put it down. I was impressed by how cohesive all the POV changes were, and I really really loved how this ended. It’s been awhile since I read a post-apocalyptic zombie book and many times I struggle with how those books end. I absolutely loved the ending to this one.

Every morning, Melanie is brought to class. The sergeant and his team come for her and the other special children. The children are strapped into their chairs and have their muzzles put on. Melanie loves class; it is a wonderful diversion from the boring existence she leads. She especially loves Miss Justineau. Miss Justineau doesn’t just teach them dry numbers and out-dated facts but tells them stories and brings the outside world in to them. Then things go wrong, and Melanie realizes there is a lot about the outside world she doesn’t understand.

The beginning of this book really has you guessing and pondering who and what these children are; it sucks you in and makes you keep reading. Then things get a bit more traditional post-apocalyptic zombie mid-story and you end up on the run with the characters. This part was also well done.

I enjoyed some of the creative aspects to the story that really put it outside of your standard post-apocalyptic zombie read. I like that the infection was fungal based rather than viral. I enjoyed the characters trying to figure out and wrap their heads around the way the world was changing. The characters are well done; they feel real and have depth. The POV does jump around a lot and very quickly, which makes it hard to really get inside their heads. However, I thought the way the POV switches were done was really seamless and really helped to propel the story forward rather than breaking it up (like some POV changes do).

This really makes you think about a lot of things. For example, what is standard behavior and what makes someone human? I can understand why this got a lot of attention when it came out (yeah, over 10 years ago now but it has been on my reading list a long time).

So what didn’t I like about it? The mid part of the story was a bit too standard running from zombies type of storyline for me. After the intriguing beginning, I started to get a bit bored by the routine path the story was taking. However, the ending definitely redeemed the story, and I enjoyed it. Also at times this was almost too fast-paced, I never really got to know some of the side characters that well. I would also have liked to see how Melanie developed more.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I am glad I read this and I can see myself thinking back to this book in the future. This book breaks out of traditional post-apocalyptic zombie thrillers by presenting some new and fresh ideas to that sort of scenario. This was incredibly fast-paced, easy to read, and hard to put down. The beginning was mysterious and fascinating, the middle a bit typical zombie survival, but the ending…man I loved the ending. This was one of my favorite endings to a zombie survival book ever. I would definitely recommend if you are looking for a post-apocalyptic zombie book that has some good twists.