The Girl With All the Gifts
This book was greatly redeemed by it's thoroughly stunning ending. It came out of nowhere and was not at all how I expected this book to wrap up. But it was so fitting and perfect that I ended this book feeling much better about it than I had been while I was reading it.
The truth is that I struggled with this book a bit. Which has a lot to do with my lack of interest in contamination stories in general. It's not that I dislike them, but they aren't my go-to. They have to be really special for me to get excited about them (as opposed to vampires, where I am all in, regardless of the quality of the story-telling). And there were some really great things in this book. But there were some not-great things that served to drag it down.
First, the bad. It mostly comes down to the tense. This book is written in the present tense, with flash backs happening in the past tense. Which makes sense when you say it like that. Except that most books are written in the past tense with flashbacks happening in the past-perfect. That's what I'm used to reading and it's what my brain is subconsciously expecting. I spent a lot of this book confused about what was happening when, re-reading passages to pull myself back into the right part of the story. Which more on me than the author, but it didn't help my enjoyment of the book.
That said, there were a bunch of interesting details. I liked that the zombie-cause was a fungus, rather than a virus. It was a neat little twist, and my brain went to the zombie ants shortly before the text got there, which added a nice layer. I also liked the initial mystery (even if I was slightly spoiled, knowing this was a zombie book going in).
And, like I said, the ending was amazing, and made up for some plodding in the middle of the book. All in all it was a good Halloween book. But I'm also officially over zombies.
The truth is that I struggled with this book a bit. Which has a lot to do with my lack of interest in contamination stories in general. It's not that I dislike them, but they aren't my go-to. They have to be really special for me to get excited about them (as opposed to vampires, where I am all in, regardless of the quality of the story-telling). And there were some really great things in this book. But there were some not-great things that served to drag it down.
First, the bad. It mostly comes down to the tense. This book is written in the present tense, with flash backs happening in the past tense. Which makes sense when you say it like that. Except that most books are written in the past tense with flashbacks happening in the past-perfect. That's what I'm used to reading and it's what my brain is subconsciously expecting. I spent a lot of this book confused about what was happening when, re-reading passages to pull myself back into the right part of the story. Which more on me than the author, but it didn't help my enjoyment of the book.
That said, there were a bunch of interesting details. I liked that the zombie-cause was a fungus, rather than a virus. It was a neat little twist, and my brain went to the zombie ants shortly before the text got there, which added a nice layer. I also liked the initial mystery (even if I was slightly spoiled, knowing this was a zombie book going in).
And, like I said, the ending was amazing, and made up for some plodding in the middle of the book. All in all it was a good Halloween book. But I'm also officially over zombies.
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