The Boy on the Bridge

Wow, that was a good one—just as gripping as the first! I started it on audio, and the reader Finty Williams did a wonderful job. Just now, I searched her name in my library’s online catalog and ordered an audiobook I didn’t know anything about, just because she’s the reader. I only switched to print halfway through because the book was getting so exciting, and I couldn’t wait until my next commute to get back to it.
This prequel fills in some blanks from Girl With All the Gifts and leaves others a mystery, but it’s a good zombie apocalypse story on its own, a page-turner with some nice surprises. I loved the Greaves and Carlisle characters.
I enjoy Carey’s writing. Here are a couple of sentences that jumped out at me.

He

show more

tries again, but still can’t find the right mood of scholarly detachment. It melts in the universal solvent of recent memories.

He had already learned to read, but now he learned the pleasure of stories which is like no other pleasure—the experience of slipping sideways into another world and living there for as long as you want to.

Most of the way through, this felt like it could be read independently of Girl With All the Gifts, but I changed my mind when I got to the epilogue, and would recommend reading them in order of publication. They’re both winners. show less

The Girl With All the Gifts was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of book: smart science, interesting existential quandaries. The Boy on the Bridge is the Girl With All the Gifts redux. But unfortunately, literally: the smart but loving female scientist, and the precocious but different kid and they travel with a small crew who are deadset against them, all together exploring a land laid waste by the zombie plague. Unfortunately with all of the clever twists done already in The Girl, there wasn't much new and I felt like The Boy largely dragged.

That's not to say there weren't well-drawn characters and emotional beats -- there were, but it really hit basically all the same emotional, plot and character notes as The Girl did.

A little sigh escaped as I read the last sentence of this wonderful book.

For all the times in the book that the "hungries" scarfed down, the saddest was when they scarfed down on a beautiful, majestic stag:
"The animal is in among the hungries before the ones closest to it start to stir. Their heads come upright on their necks, swivel around to take in range and distance. And then they're on the move.
The stag finds itself, with no warning, at the center of a vast convergence.
It breaks into a gallop, but that's not going to help because there's nowhere to run to that isn't already crowded. The hungries may have looked sparse spread out across the valley, but Jesus, do they rally to the sound of the dinnerbell! They come sprinting in show more from every quarter, backs bent and heads thrust forward. Now there are sounds: the working of their jaws, the pounding of their feet, the occasional brute, blunt impact as one runs up against another in its haste and they both goes sprawling down the hill.
The first hungry to reach the stag sinks its teeth into its flank. The second into its throat. Then it's impossible to count, impossible to see. The stag disappears under a living wave of human bodies ( or post-human, Khan corrects herself reflexively ). The sound of its fall is a dull thud, muffled by distance."

The 15-year-old character, John Greaves, is either on the autistic spectrum, or he's so traumatized by his parents' death in front of him, that he can't bear to be touched or to look into people's eyes. But one thing that endeared him to me, was his love of books:
".. the key to survival was not being noticed at all.
Until suddenly the key was rina [Dr. Khan]. She took him out of school for weeks at a time to teach him herself, in her canvas-walled lab -- to teach him science mostly, but other things too. She reasoned that if he loved the captain [a toy he had when he was found as a young child], he would have a taste for science fiction and fantasy in general, so she introduced him to Asimov and clarke, then Miéville and Gaiman and le Guin. He had already learned to read, but now he learned the pleasure of stories which is like no other pleasure -- the experience of slipping sideways into another world and living there for as long as you want to."

"Fry [Brigadier Fry] listened politely as Carlisle made his case and then she corrected him, punctilious to a fault.
'you think I see democracy as irrelevant, isaac? I don't. Please don't think that. When humankind was in the ascendant, when we ruled the world and the whole of creation bowed down to us, democratic institutions worked and nothing else did. The dictatorships were the sleazy corners where people were poor and miserable and governments were parasitic. Back then I bowed to civil authorities and I followed orders and I never once asked myself if there was something I was missing. Democracy made sense.' "
We're on our way, Fry.

The moment when Dr Khan is bitten, the reader finds out what it feels like inside a human turning into a "hungry."
"She is still human. The moment when she was bitten plays on a continuous loop in her brain, vivid and terrifying, but it must be an illusion. A trauma artifact. She must have been stabbed or scratched or sliced, or else something scraped against her open wound and caused that sharp Spike of pain. She has managed to evade the (literally) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the hungry pathogen very briefly from the inside.
All the same, something is very wrong. Under the bandage her skin is alive, crawling as though it wants to migrate to some other part of her. Her head is heavy and hot. Her stomach too, an oven baking her dry. When she cried for john, which she did long and hard, no tears came from her eyes."

Dr Khan is pregnant, we learn. She got pregnant on the Long March to Beacon [refugee camp for the last humans in England, south of London]. But she didn't find out that she was pregnant until they're in a town called Invercrae, scrounging supplies, where she goes into a drug store and finds pregnancy kits.
She's giving birth on Rosie [the Rosalind Franklin, lab/crew quarters/gunship tank on treads], now:
"And they're all good for about 3 hours or so after that. It's actually quite peaceful in the crew quarters. Foss playing endless games of patience, Lost in the algorithmic flow like it's a Zen meditation, and Khan pumping air through her teeth in a rhythm that accelerates and then falls back again and again like the tide hitting the base of a cliff.
Then, just as Foss is teasing out her third ace, Dr Khan's Waters go like Niagara fuxking falls, dripping through her inch-thick mattress to rain down on the bottom bunk ( which is Dr fournier's, so no harm done) [everybody hates Dr Fournier, who is the civilian leader of the mission, who is a coward, kissass to military authorities back in Beacon, and a work evader].
'Looks like you're we're on, sugar lump,' Foss says lightly.
When you're a mile outside the limits of your competence, there is some comfort to be had in sounding like you know what you're doing."

I like the part in the book where the character grieves teaches me a new word. And I also like the moment when the author gives me probably the best definition of Sanity that I've ever read:
" 'I'm warning you is tautologous,' Greaves says. He almost shouts it, his strained voice rising in pitch. This is the most dangerous moment, with the [dead] feral child actually in Dr fournier's line of sight -- a visual cue for the forbidden topic.
'What?' Dr Fournier splutters.
'to say you're warning somebody is to perform a self-enacting speech act. The warning is contained in the words used to announce that a warning is being given.' He's babbling, pushing the conversation like a boulder away from the place where it mustn't go.
'Greaves, are you mad?' The doctor's face has darkened to a deep red, almost purple.
Perhaps he is. There would be no way of knowing, which of course is always the problem -- not just for him but for everyone. Sanity is a suspended state, moored in nothing but itself. You test the ground an inch in front of you, move forward as though it's solid. But the whole world is in freefall and you're in freefall with it."

This is the second book after "the girl with all the gifts." Another five star book, it's supposedly running at the same time as the story in "the girl with all the gifts."
Zombie stories are not my thing, but the way this author writes, it's like no other zombie story I've heard of.
I love the ending, when our beloved protagonist from "the girl with all the gifts," melanie, shows up. It's the best ever. show less

I loved the bleak world of The Girl With All The Gifts and was stoked for this book - I hadn't realized it was a prequel until I dove in.

The book follows the crew of the Rosie, the mobile military lab found abandoned in the first book. The crew is desperately looking for a cure or treatment for the infection when they stumble on a different type of hungry, one that is exclusively made up of young children, but capable of reason and communication. The crew consist of uptight scientists and gruff military, but the heart of the crew is a young but precocious child and their wise, love teacher/mother stand-in. Sound familiar?

What I'm saying is, thematically, there's a lot of resemblance between this book and the previous one. Its like show more poetry. They rhyme. While I found it irksome at times, the character Stephen is sufficiently different from Melanie that the book didn't seem like an entire retread.

Let's talk about Stephen. He's presented from several different perspectives, including his own, and through these different viewpoints we see a young man who is curious, brilliant, and without a doubt on the autism spectrum (and likely PTSD as well). Stephen made me feel downright uncomfortable at the beginning of the book. I largely detest the presentation of autism = savant in the media for the same reasons I detest the presentation of schizophrenia = DID. I shuddered at the comparison of Stephen to a computer (from his perspective, no less, giving the comparison more legitimacy) - NO brains function that way, and it reinforces the idea that those on the spectrum are little emotionless living robots. I detested how often the book showed over told in regards to things like eye contact and physical touch and social skills. It felt like Carey was reading from the DSM to make sure we got it. I stuck it out.

I'm glad I did. It does improve over the course of the book. There's less comparisons to computers and less painfully direct exposition on an aversion to touch and Stephen is allowed to be a character. And honestly? He's my favorite character. And he's the most important character. He's important to the plot and the world, of course, but also important in terms of representation. I was so happy to see a character on the spectrum, as a hero, and successful. It means a lot to me. As does having a female lead in a science career, one that is intelligent and bold. Lord knows we don't have enough neurodiversity or minorities represented in fiction. Stephen is curious, honest, rigid, clever, loving, stubborn, patient, enthusiastic. He is complex and different and had he been replaced with a typical male scientist character the book would have suffered for it.

This book has a different feel from the first. In the first, there is little hope and the details of the world are tickle fed to you like a horrific mystery novel. Here, we already know largely how the tale will end and the details of the world. Its more of a character story, playing with the interpersonal relationships among the crew and contrasting their actions with those of the second generation hungry children. Spoiler: its not a flattering comparison for us.

Not as strong as the first, but if you enjoyed the first, and aren't expecting the exact same unraveling mystery style, you'll likely enjoy this. show less

First book of 2018 (just as Girl was my first book a couple years back) and once again I'm swept away in spite of myself by the stifling post-apocalyptic environment (here an armoured medical research vehicle rather than a research base) and the mismatched cast's epic journey to avoid getting eaten whilst searching for a cure.

This is a companion novel / sort of prequel rather than a sequel - but set only just before Girl. Expect more world building and shading in of the current context rather than a harrowing account of the Breakdown. The characters are perhaps less original than Girl, but I still found myself invested in their struggles.

Good stuff.

I really love the clean, scientific style with which M.R. Carey writes zombies. It’s completely engaging, and less of a gory, chomping, blood-splattering mess, and more asking human questions. This was the story of what happened to one of the scientific expedition tank/car/busses that went out ten years before the events of “The Girl With All the Gifts” and was never seen again. Of course, we see it in that book, but never have any answers.

Seeing it, and having *some* clue as to what’s going to happen, but not really, just made it that much more fun. As in the previous book, the characters completely make this one. Wildly different personalities and it’s made all the better by the fact that everyone is locked up in a rolling show more tin can with no personal space. Delightful read.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less

4 and 1/2 stars

I received this novel from Orbit Books, in exchange for an honest review.

When I heard that M.R. Carey was writing another novel in the same world he created for The Girl With All the Gifts, I was quite thrilled: post-apocalyptic scenarios are always fascinating, and this author had already delivered a compelling, chillingly believable one on the premise of an infection by the parasitic fungus Cordyceps, that turned affected humans into a sort of zombies, or "hungries".

This new novel is set a few years before the events of its predecessor, and shows the changed world in wider details, although it shares the same enclosed, claustrophobic feeling of its companion story: here a mixed crew of military and scientists travels show more across devastated Britain on board an armored vehicle, the Rosalind Franklin (or "Rosie"), following the tracks of a previous expedition that never made it back to the relatively safe haven of Beacon. Rosie's crew is tasked with the retrieval of the tissue cultures left by their unfortunate colleagues, in the hope of gleaning some information that might lead to a cure for the Cordyceps plague.

The difficult interaction between the science team and the soldiers escorting them is not helped by the cramped conditions aboard Rosie, a mix between a tank and a mobile lab, while the lack of any appreciable results in the search sets a pall of hopelessness over the general mood. The divide between the two groups is further stressed by the different personalities of their respective leaders, forced to share command of the expedition: colonel Carlisle is a tainted hero of the Breakdown, the time when the plague effectively ended civilization, and he's weighted down by the memories of what he had to do under orders; while doctor Fournier is a mix between scientist and bureaucrat, more the latter than the former in truth, and a man with scarce-to-absent people skills.

Further friction comes from the presence of the youngest member of the team, teenaged Stephen Greaves: he's an orphan possessed of a brilliant, if disturbed, mind - despite his young age he's the inventor of the blocking gel that hides humans' scent from the keen sense of smell of the hungries, but his introvert, almost autistic behavior had the crew nicknaming him "the Robot". The only person truly close to him, and the one who insisted on his presence for the expedition, is doctor Samrina Kahn, who has somehow adopted Stephen and managed to establish with him a relationship based on mutual trust. Kahn, however, is now plagued by a problem that might prove damaging for the mission and everyone's safety: she discovered she's pregnant…

Where The Girl With All the Gifts dealt with the interaction between the uninfected humans and a group of second-generation contaminated children still in possession of their mental faculties, here the focus is solely on humans; and if the first novel was set in a time in which the Breakdown was already one generation removed, here it's still a fresh, painful memory: people still remember vividly the life they led before, and this adds to their behavior a poignancy that was almost absent in the people managing the base where Melanie and her companions were being studied. The world that was is dramatically present in the awareness of these survivors, allowing the readers to see more about its collapse and the birth of the new, fragile attempt at a new society that is still in the throes of its birth.

It would be legitimate to believe, or hope, that in the face of such a tragedy the remnants of humanity would regroup and form a more cohesive community, but that's indeed wishful thinking, as the coalitions aboard Rosie - and the political maneuvering in Beacon - show with tragic clarity: even in the face of mass extinction individuals look for more power, or the assertion of their worth; for supreme leadership or the meaningless praise of academia. The end of this world might be hastened by the Cordyceps infection, but its people can inflict just as much harm as the hordes of hungries roaming the land.

As with the first novel, hope seems to reside with younger people: here much rests on the shoulders of Stephen Greaves, a teenager whose brilliance is offset by enormous difficulties in interacting with others, either physically or verbally - and the brief flashes about his past leave us wondering weather his condition was congenital or the result of the horrifying event that orphaned him. That same removal, however, is coupled with great powers of observation that enable him to somehow figure out his traveling companions and to adopt behavioral patterns that allow him to coexist with them in the stifling confines of Rosie. Stephen ultimately becomes the interface between the humans and the new breed of children born after the plague's spread, feral creatures that are nonetheless able to create societal rules and to work together - he does not truly belong with either group, and therefore is the one who can attempt to bridge the gap: I've wondered more than once if this was the real meaning of the book's title, rather than the one offered by the circumstances of Stephen's rescue…

Although Stephen figures prominently in the story, the overall mood of the novel is choral, as the various events are observed through the eyes of several of Rosie's crew, and this multi-faceted observation helps move the story along especially in the first part of the book, where the going looks a little slow and not much seems to happen: the characters come across in sharp definition and the frictions that move through Rosie like unstable currents make this novel just as much a study of human psychology as a post-apocalyptic drama. Once events start rolling, though, they move at a steady, unrelenting pace toward the final showdown, one that kept me on the edge of the proverbial seat because I was aware of the multiplicity of scenarios that could come into being: what really happens in the end is filled with such moving intensity that I could not help being affected by it, and I realized it was an even more powerful ending than the one of The Girl With All the Gifts.

And as if that were not enough, there is an even more compelling epilogue where the past represented by this story meets the "present" of Melanie's story and segues into the future, tying all the narrative threads into an amazing, awe-inspiring finale. Should Mr. Carey choose to return to this world for more stories, I will be more than delighted to read them…



Originally posted at SPACE AND SORCERY Blog show less