The Girl with all the Gifts

"The Girl with all the gifts" first came to my attention as a movie premier on Sky Cinemas. I had never heard of this movie before and it was billed as an intelligent zombie movie so I started to watch it and really enjoyed it, plenty of action and indeed a intelligent zombie movie which introduced a new scenario in a genre which I thought there was nothing new under the sun. The Movie is based on the excellent book of the same name by M.R. Carey who I had not heard of before my introduction to this movie so I bought the book and really enjoyed it. The review I do below is on the book, but I certainly recommend you see the movie, perhaps read the book first as there are some subtle changes in the movie, most notably the lead character called Melanie and also the ending but no spoilers here. M R Carey is a pen name for Mike Carey, comic book writer and other projects and so he has written this critically acclaimed zombie fiction. The zombie apocalypse has already occurred when we start this book, quite some time ago and in this novel it is referred to as the Breakdown. Every piece of zombie fiction has it's labels for aspects of the zombie apocalypse. In this the zombies are called Hungries. And they are not quite the braindead, fleshy, plodding creatures that we are used to. The book opens in a scientific military complex where children are kept captive and sometimes get wheeled away never to appear again. Miss Justineau is one of their teachers and she forms a close bond with one of the captive children Melanie. It becomes clear that the children are different and Dr Caldwell sees them purely as test subjects, available for dissection. Parks, a gruff soldier is seemingly untouched by events at the compound and is a soldier first and foremost. Anyway, one night Miss Justineau, Melanie, Caldwell and two soldiers Parks and Gallagher have to escape the compound together. And so begins a journey to another military compound where they think they will be safe again and Caldwell is determined to continue her research. She is searching for a cure to the zombie infection, but she is bloody minded in her approach and sees nothing but the end result. Far from being the dangerous burden of the group, Melanie proves herself to be the saviour. The Girl With All The Gifts has enough novelty and innovation to make it stand above the derivative masses, it's a good solid read with skillful story-telling and well worth picking up. There is a real life science to this book about Zombie Ants, turned into zombies by a fungus called Ophiocordyceps, if you run it through Youtube you can find a very interesting video narrated by David Attenbough on it, I may do a blog post about this on a later date as its an extremely interesting subject. All in all I highly recommend this book (also the movie shortly after)