It was ok, nothing more. A friend had talked it up as being sci-fi, but it wasn’t really. Or rather, if one categorises it as sci-fi, then it’s under post-apocalyptic zombie sci-fi.

I found everything after they left the base a bit tedious, and I didn’t actually like the shift in POV between characters. I would have much preferred only Melanie’s narrative.

Speaking of Melanie, I must agree with Dr Caldwell on the matter of her humanity. She’s a zombie, sorry I meant to say *hungry*, not a little girl.

Hungry is one of the more stupid terms for zombies yet, and it contrasts harshly and unfavourably with the rather intriguing concepts of what the zombie virus in this novel actually is.


I didn’t enjoy the ending but as the author had written their way into a corner, there wasn’t really any other possibility than the special hungries like Melanie inheriting the earth.
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I think this is a DNF despite the pre-release fanfare because I can't engage w/ the story and already feel like I know where its going.

I never really thought I'd read a novel about zombies. I went into this not knowing I was, or maybe I wouldn't have, and that would have really been a shame, because then I would have missed a fantastic, gripping, stay-up-too-late-reading kind of story.

The central character is a young girl who years ago was kidnapped and named Melanie by her captors. Her kidnappers are soldiers and scientists from the remnants of what was, until twenty years ago, Great Britain. Melanie is held captive with a number of other children who are kept tightly locked down in their cells most of the time, only taken out, securely chained, for classroom lessons. Obviously considered extremely dangerous, Melanie doesn't know why, for she has no memory of anything of her life before this one, and knows nothing of the wider world besides what the teachers have told them. Sure, she knows it's odd that she and the other kids only eat bowls of grubs, when she gathers from stories they're read that most people eat very different things, and that the children react strangely when they smell an adult's scent under the layers of chemical scent-blocker, but it's hard for her to piece much together.

After an attack destroys the army base they live in, Melanie is taken along with a scientist, a teacher whom she loves, and 2 soldiers on a Mad Max style journey (or maybe a Walking Dead style journey, not sure, I've never seen that show). She comes to understand who she is, and what has happened in the world. Which is where it gets really interesting.

Melanie reminds me of Eli, the vampire who is an apparent child, in Lindqvist's [b:Let the Right One In|943402|Let the Right One In|John Ajvide Lindqvist|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327893384s/943402.jpg|928338]. She loves a normal human, but her basic nature would force her to eat that human. This can, and naturally does, lead to dangerous situations, while the characters try to work out what this all means, what rights a person like this should have, and indeed what it means to be "human", or worthy of being loved and protected.

Meanwhile the group tries to journey back to the protected city of the remaining uninfected population, hoping it's still there, needing to avoid your typical mindless zombies, "junkers" - surviving uninfected Mongol Horde types, and the appearance of wild, and vicious, groups of children like Melanie, infected by the zombie fungus yet intriguingly retaining a measure of free will and intelligence you wouldn't expect from a zombie. They have no language, which apparently is all they lack for a very un-zombielike complete sense of human consciousness, which explains why Melanie's sense of individuality and memory only begins when captured by surviving humans and taught it.

Not sure how scientifically kosher that is, though we're dealing with a never before encountered and scientifically unlikely fungus that rapidly turns human civilization into zombieland, so I suppose the author has wide leeway to make a bit up.

Anyway, the book is terrifically entertaining, smart, well written, and has an intriguing ending. I couldn't see how Carey was going to end this even right up to the last few pages, and then I was pleased with how he did, so that's excellent. ( )

There are major and minor PLOT SPOILERS throughout this review. You've been warned. :)

I picked this book up on a whim, just because I hadn't seen it before and hadn't heard anything about it, but it sounded intriguing. I read the first couple of pages and found myself super curious to learn more about these strange children in wheelchairs, living their lives in a cell area. It was shelved as sci-fi/fantasy at my bookstore, so I thought it might have something to do with children with superpowers, or medically enhanced abilities.
What I was NOT expecting was a zombie novel! Turns out those children living in the basement are actually zombies, or at least they partially are. If they smell human flesh or sweat, they have that jaw-chopping urge to dig in to someone's arm. The rest of the time though, the children don't behave like "normal" zombies (or "hungries, as they're called here).
But since everyone around them wears a gel to mask that human smell, the children don't know what they are. They don't know that they are part of an experiment trying to figure out why they are different from the typical hungries. Why can these children think and learn, but other hungries only move when they smell humans?

The main protagonist is a little 10-year-old child/hungry named Melanie. She is bright, eager to learn, and devoted to one of the teachers, Ms. Justineau. Melanie doesn't know anything but the cell she lives in, the classroom Ms. Justineau teaches in, and the hallway leading to the classroom.
I found these two characters, and the relationship between them, to be one of the most heartfelt and enthralling parts of book. Melanie continually struggles with her perception of the world and of herself. Once she learns she is a hungry, Melanie is scared of what she might do to Ms. Justineau, the one person she loves with every fiber of her being. Melanie also is unsure of who she is- a doctor wants to pick her brain apart, her teacher wants to protect her, and all around, people are killing the fully-fledged hungries, the ones who can't think like Melanie can, but Melanie wonders what separates herself fully from them.

I won't give a huge detailed list of each character, but the whole cast was beautifully written. Each character was flawed, a little rough, and they each clearly had their own goals and intentions. It was easy to see what drove them, and the choices they made both surprised me and made sense at the same time. There was some excellent character development throughout, and I felt as if I were right there with each person.

Personally, I believe the two major strengths of "The Girl With All the Gifts" are this:
1- The well-executed surprise. Like I said, I was surprised by most of the actions and plot turns, and was constantly itching to find out what was going to happen. There is, like many zombie books/movies, a search going on to find a cure for the zombie plague. What happened in the end was NOT NOT NOT what I was expecting, and although the ending was a little bit rushed, I thought it was fresh and stupendously real. It didn't have a typical "happy ending, everyone is cured", but rather felt like something I could see happening if a zombie-fungus really did ever take over Earth.
2- The exploration of Good and Bad. Here's an excerpt from the book:

"And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what’s inside is good or bad. Because it’s both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out."

There are many examples and levels of where this is explored; one is when the Doctor asks Ms. Justineau if her mission to protect Melanie is more important than the Doc's mission to find a cure.They have incredibly different motives, but each one sees her own mission as "the good" goal.
Melanie often ponders the world, weighing bits of it against one another. She wonders if she herself is Good or Bad, Hungry or Human. The ending itself is not necessarily a "good" ending for everyone...or is it?
I may be looking too much into this, but really, that's largely what I took from the novel. Not only that, but it was thought-provoking, refreshingly unlike a "typical" zombie read, and I had my emotions pulled all over the place.

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I didn't realize going into this that this was a zombie novel. (Sorry if that's a spoiler.) Zombie stories usually aren't my thing. But this was well written (and the audiobook well performed). ( )