Bite Me

Hola Readers!  Who is ready for a promised rambling?  Cool, let's get to it.  Today's book is one that was given to me by one of my favorite firehouse buddy's waaaaaaay back in October.  It has been on my TBR pile since then, but various circumstances have conspired to keep pushing the book back until this last month.   The book is The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey and ended up being both exactly what I thought it was going to be, yet at the same time entirely different...As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Melanie is a just a school age girl living in a post apocalyptic world...except that her life is limited to a cell and a classroom.  Melanie it turns out is part of...a test subject group of children...(the ellipses are 'cause I don't know how else to describe them.) Anyways during the week Melanie and her classmates are taken from their individual cells and strapped into wheelchairs.  They are also masked and muzzled.  The kids are then wheeled into a classroom where various teachers teach various topics with various degrees of success.  Ms. Justineau is Melanie's favorite and is probably the most effective teacher of the bunch.  Ms. Justineau is also drawn to Melanie, feeling as if she is special in someway.  So pretty quickly we find out that the world has been ravaged by humans turned zombie and that the children are a weird mutant strain of said zombie that are being studied on the military base they are being held.  Turns out that a strain of fungal infection that has mutated from Iphigenia In Aulis (which is a real thing) has jumped species and turned humans into some form of zombie carrier for the fungal spore.  The kids that are part of this strange class are all high functioning infected group called hungriest.  Melanie is by far the smartest and most inquisitive of the group.  Dr. Caroline Cadwell is our resident mad scientist who is willing to do whatever it takes to find a cure for the infection and that includes cutting up the infected kids, using the excuse that they haven't been human since infection.  Eventually the base is over run by humans known as "junkers" that are so far uninfected humans that live off the grid.  The only people to escape are Melanie, Dr Cadwell (who had been just about to dissect Melanie), Ms. Justineau (who went to rescue Melanie), Sgt. Eddie Parks (the hard ass with a heart of gold guy in charge of this whole circus) and Kieran Gallagher ( a young and borderline idealistic soldier).  The group progresses through the landscape in the hopes of reaching the main human settelment on the British Isle called Beacon.  Along the way each member of the group has to cope with what Melanie is, a hungry that has the appearance and mannerisms of a child.  She is intelligent, able to make her own choices and yet still has the hunger for living flesh that her "hungry" counterpoints all have.   Each person deals with it in a different way.  Ms. Justineau essentially believes that she is all little girl who just has an unfortunate disease and needs to be protected.  Dr. Cadwell see's her as her ticket to scientific glory and nothing more then a case to be dissected and studied.  Sgt. Parks see's Melanie as a both an insurmountable danger and an assets and is constantly torn between both view points.  Mr. Gallagher usually just forgets that Melanie is anything more then a child.  As the motley group progresses they come across all manner of hungries.  Most of them are mindless flesh eaters, but a few seem to retain some semblance of their old humanity to varying degrees.  Eventually they end up in London and discover hungries with weird gray stalks growing from their bodies.  Turns out that eventually the fungus eats up the body and starts to grow itself to release new spores.  After much intro and extrospection (that's a word...right?) the group ends up attacked and reduced.  In the end, right before she dies, Dr. Caldwell discovers that some few humans hang on to enough humanity to reproduce and those kids who are born with the infection are much more intelligent and human like...hence Melanie.  The remenents of the group run into a strange grey wall that appears to be massive amounts of fungus stalks with seed pods that burst when set on fire.  More fighting, dying and expounding and Melanie comes to a realization.  She puts Ms. Justineau, the sole remaining human in a bio suit then proceeds to set the grey wall on fire, releasing the spores.  See, Melanie figures that the more human infected hungeries are the next generation in human evolution and started spreading the spores to hasten the process, keeping Ms. Justineau to teach the new hungry children.

World Building - The world is fairly complete, with nothing to original until we get to the gray stalk wall, which adds a bit of surreal otherworldlyness to the whole deal. It is pretty much a destroyed modern day London and surrounding areas in a slightly futuristic and destroyed vibe.  Pretty whole and complete zombie apocalypse with a fungal twist.

Story - The story was an interesting mix of run of the mill zombie with bits of originalness (I'm just making up words all over this post).  The mechanism of the zombie infection was pretty original, and I liked that it had real origins (more on that in a minute).  The real story though is Melanie and everybody's reaction to her.  I have read various thoughts on what the supposed "twist" was in the book, and I would say the ending, with Melanie essentially dooming the whole British Isle and possibly all of humanity, while still possibly saving them was perhaps the most unexpected part of the book...at least for me.

Character - One of the best and worst parts about this book is probably the characters.  On the one hand you have characters like Melanie, who is very accepting of what she is, practical and able to adapt.  She is able to understand what she is without letting it overwhelm her, which is more then I can say for many adults.  On the other hand most of the other characters come across and pretty stock.  We have our mad scientist ho is willing to go way to far in the name of science.  The sweet teacher with a past that just wants to love the poor abandon child, the super gruff with a hidden heart of gold soldier...etc...That being said, even with the...tropieness of most of the characters, I still found myself engrossed in their story and sympathizing with most of them...so...yeah.

Editing - For the most part the editing was fairly decent.  The story moved forward and mostly made sense.  The chapters skipped around with different view points, which for the most part was pretty cool as we didn't only see the story from one perspective.  Every once in a while the transition between chapters was a bit jarring, but mostly it was pretty readable.

The Fungus - Ok, so my logical brain both loved and hated the explanation for the zombie plague.  On one hand the idea that the infection stemmed from a real fungus that really does turn living

creatures (albeit ant's) into fairly legit zombies is pretty cool.  It gives a fairly realistic way for this usually unrealistic plague to happen.  The progression of the fungus also is pretty well thought out and did not trigger any of my "oh right, like that would ever happen" bells.  On the other hand, the piece I do take issue with is that these monster flesh eating creatures would on occasion be lucid enough to get pregnant, carry the kid, give birth, not eat the baby, and then the baby would survive long enough to become the next step in the evolutionary process...not so much...Yeah.

The Author - This is the book that actually inspired my previous post.  I was reading it and thinking it was written for YA by an author that writes for that genre (I don't know why that was my assumption, but their you go.).  Anyways, I was actually a bit on the fence 'cause while I don't feel our youth should be sheltered or talked down to...this book just did not really vibe as one I would hand to a 12 year old.  Then I did some research and discovered who the author was and who the real intended audience was and magically the book totally changed tone for me.  In this case it made the overall experience infinatly better.  It is a gritty book that does not pull any punches and it fit's the authors more comic book style very well.  I also learned that the author wrote the screeenplay for the movie simultaneously, and that he stated that it was purposely different from the book.   I have not seen it yet, but if it is worth it, I'll post about it later.

Expectations - This book was a weird dichotomy for me because it was both exactly what I thought it would be and surprising at both the same time.  I was expecting a book about a kid who was a zombie but not,,,and that is exactly what it was.  On the other hand, the book was much much darker and grittier and philosophical then I had anticipated.  It was strange to read a book that pretty much did everything I expected it to, and yet still had the power to surprise me with various tidbits and actions.  I also feel like the genre/age group that this book was intended for gets muddled.  The idea of the whole book, leads me to feel like it should be a YA book, but the reality is that I feel it is intended for a bit more of a mature audience

Overall Impression - Almost two weeks later I still haven't gotten a handle of how I really feel about this book.  I know that it made me think, which I love.  I know that it made me spend most of a flight talking Hubbins ear off about various things, also good.  I know that it frustrated me 'cause it could have been even better, the ending could have been phenomenal instead of merely great.  The expectations could have been set differently...who knows...I guess I give the book 7 out of 10 bowels of maggots and recommend it to anybody looking for a good zombie book with a hint of something different.  Happy Reading Everybody!

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

With the passing of Terry Pratchett, a great author who has contributed to the field of fantasy in a massive and wonderful way I had the urge to read one of his works.  To this end I chose Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman as this is most probably his most well known work, and I love Neil Gaiman as well so it was a win, win, win for me.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Antichrist has been born and the prophesied end of the world has now started.  Now this is understandably a big deal and with that we follow a couple of characters through the end of the world.  Our main duo are Crowley, a demon of hell who has spent a lot of time on earth and isn't really that bad of a fellow, and his unlikely buddy Aziraphale, an angel (and occasional rare book dealer) who has also spent a lot of time on earth and is not quit as angelic as one would think.  The two buddies decide that they kind of like Earth as it is and feel that the impending apocalypse might put a damper on things.  When they get recalled by their respective entities both beings decide that maybe they won't go as summoned.  Meanwhile a woman named Anathema Device has been trying to decipher her ancestor Agnes Nutter's obscure prophecies, culminating in her knowing about a whole lot of what's gonna happen without actually understanding it.  We are introduced to the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, a red woman named War who is followed by violence; A man all in black named Famine who encourages eating without substance and extreme dieting; A pale oozy man by the name of Pollution (who took over after Pestilence got a bit less scary with the advent of

Penicillin) and of course Death, who is pretty awesome and never shows his face.  The four ride pretty kickass motorcycles and are instrumental in bringing about the proper ending of the world.  Arguably the most important character in this whole book is the Antichrist...who through a mixup is being raised as an ordinary boy by the name of Adam (meanwhile Warlock, the boy everybody thinks is the Antichrist is seriously disappointing the evil minions) who runs a small gang of neighborhood kids call the Them.  Adam has an impossible imagination and runs with his gang all over town dreaming up amazing games.  As everything starts coming to a head, Adam meets Anathema, who has taken residence up in Tadfield and gives Adam some literature that lead his imagination to take an even bigger leap.  Adam starts playing games with the Them that involves some of the stuff he has read, what he doesn't realize is that while he "plays" in the real world things are happening.  For example, he and his friends imagine the raising of Atlantis...and out in the ocean an unknown island nation appears.  He also decides that the world has too many weapons and explains to his friends how he wishes all the weapons would disappear...and so it happens.  As time goes on Adam starts to realize his power and scares his friends as he lays out a vision that would essentially empty the world of people, dividing what is left between himself and his three friends.  It becomes apparent to the other players that the epicenter of the power that will end the world is in Tadfield and Anathema, The Four Horseman, and Crowley and Azriaphale all converge on the small, idyllic town.   Adam has a a crisis inside himself when he realizes that he can shape the world as he wants.  He feels the urge to follow the shape of the prophecy, but finally with the help of his friends, he decides not to end the world and there by avoiding the end.  Everybody drifts back to their lives, with just the vaguest of notions something big went down...or almost when down...or something like that.

So if that did not make any sense...I know.  This is a hard book to summarize as it is less of a plot and more a bit of this and that strung together to make a story.  If you have ever read either of these authors you will probably know exactly what I mean :-)  None of this is a bad thing, it just makes it harder to explain.  Let's discuss what I liked about this book.  To start with the premise is just fun, I

mean what other setting could possibly give us the sheer variety and craziness and irreverence as the impending apocalypse.  The biggest strength of this book is the characters, as you can probably gather from the above synopsis.  Adam is my favorite, mostly because of his imagination and the way he sees the world.  I also love the Horsemen and how the authors applied their ancient plagues to the current and modern world.  One of the things I noticed (and enjoyed) was the direct correlation between Adam and his three buddies (a girl and two boys) and the Four Horsemen (and woman).  In fact at one point the four kids and the four Horsemen go head to head in an epic awesome battle.   I liked how the small town of Tadfield was the proxy for the rest of the world.  Instead of the final battle being fought in an epic town, with an epic baddie vs awesome goodie, it came down to a small town, a child, and ordinary people (and a couple of demons and angels for good measure).  The writing is familiar in a good way as I have read both of these authors and enjoyed them thoroughly.  There were a few things that didn't really get me excited as a reader.  The over all book was a bit meandering for me, there were several points where a character was introduced  and then never heard from again, or an event that was described in great detail that while entertaining, didn't really have anything to do with the book.  There was the addition of foot notes, some of which were amusing, but a lot of which were just kind of there.  Over all it was an entertaining book that was worth the read, especially if you like tongue in cheek humor, angels and demons, good times, or small idyllic towns that house the Antichrist.   I give this book 7 out of 10  demonic Bently's.
What is your favorite version of the Apocalypse?  What is the real difference between angels and demons?  Have I ever told you my sister banned me from having kids 'cause she is pretty sure I would give birth to the Antichrist?