New York, NY : Orbit, 2015.
438 p. ; 21 cm.
Maybe I'll become a fan of zombie novels yet, after reading this one. It's a darn good read - creative, exciting, moving, well-plotted, and thoughtful - a real gift of a book.
I love a sci-fi book where the premise is somewhat believable - be it the moon getting pushed into a new orbit or a supervolcano blasting away out in Wyoming - there is something very unsettling about terrifying science fiction that has one foot in reality. In The Girl with All the Gifts the zombie plague that is the setting for this novel was unleashed by a fungus that really does exist, and really does turn its victims into zombies (fortunately the victims currently are only ants). So this novel has human zombies that are compelled to eat living humans, but - and here is where the author gets creative - some of the zombies are not full zombies; in fact, these semi-zombies are children who retain the full suite of human emotions, abilities and more (they just happen to also be compelled to eat living humans).
And so the novel opens by dropping the reader into a militarized research outpost where the pitiless Dr. Caldwell searches for a cure at the expense of the inmates of the outpost - the semi-zombie children who are being taught classes and kept more or less as prisoners. Of course the novel would not be much of a thriller if things stayed at this stage, so inevitably the outpost is attacked, overrun, and only a handful of survivors tries to make their way back to one of the few cities where humans are safe from the zombies because of military protection and rule. The trip back is an adventure.
However, what puts this novel above the usual zombie, survival, dystopian thriller story are the intense and deep relationships that develop between the survivors on the run - one of who happens to be the potentially dangerous little half-zombie girl, the one with "all the gifts."
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in an exciting thriller (especially a zombie thriller), but who also wants a layered, satisfying, and thought-provoking read.
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