Books to Die For

M.R. Carey's THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS

Today's Books to Die For selection was hands down my favourite book of 2014. After years of being zombied out, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS offered a surprisingly fresh and refreshing look at the rotter mythos – one that was both engaging and full of heart.

From my review in the now sold-out Rue Morgue #147 (digital version still available):

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS makes no secret of the fact that it was penned by a popular comics/horror writer (Mike Carey: The Unwritten) using a thinly veiled pseudonym. The big question is why release it like this, with that decided un-horror cover? GIRL certainly doesn't deserve to be dumped unceremoniously onto bookstore shelves. Rather, it should be screamed about from the rooftops, as it's that rare zombie novel that even after a ten year deluge of zombie novels feels inventive – and more than a little exciting. 

Unlike many undead yarns, GIRL does not muck around in the early days of the outbreak (presented here as a parasitic infection that commandeers the brains and bodies of its victims). Instead, it sets its clock for a generation later when the last holdouts of humanity are either military enclaves still experimenting on the "hungries," in hopes of finding a cure, or are tar-slathered "junkers" using the infected as weapons of mass destruction (to get at the people and supplies housed at the army bases). But it's not just humans who have evolved as time has lapsed. Child hungries are showing a surprising aptitude to learn and feel, unlike the older infected. Are they the key to mankind's survival? Scientist Caroline Caldwell certainly thinks so. 

But GIRL is not her story so much as it is Melanie's tale. Melanie is a young hungry who has been captured for the purpose of experimentations and eventual non-sedated dissection, something she becomes aware of in the most heart-rending of ways. Spared only because she finds an ally in one of the teachers at the base, she becomes pivotal when a small group of survivors are driven into the wilds after a junker attack. GIRL succeeds at being both a sympathetic zombie story, as well as a truly terrifying one – not because of the flesh-hungry former humans, but because of the other ways the parasite is evolving to ensure its world domination. The final quarter of the book, set in the ruins of London, England, presents imagery best described as pure nightmare fuel. 

In the beginning it's easy to dismiss the survivors as stock character types, but like the story itself, they change as the true horror of what the world is faced with sinks in. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is the closest thing to a next-gen zombie yarn, and is highly recommended to anyone who thought shamblers had nowhere new left to stumble.

As THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is a relatively recent release, it is available in print and digital versions almost everywhere that books are sold. Happy, horrifying reading!