The Girl With All the Gifts
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4.4 • 493 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the ruins of civilization, a young girl's kindness and capacity for love will either save humanity -- or wipe it out in this USA Today bestselling thriller Joss Whedon calls "heartfelt, remorseless, and painfully human."
Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius."
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointed at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Marrying the dystopian chill of John Wyndham’s sci-fi classic The Chrysalids with the poignancy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s eerie Never Let Me Go, The Girl with All the Gifts is by turns deeply unsettling and achingly tender. Confined in an underground bunker, a precocious girl named Melanie is poked, prodded, and restrained by caregivers keen to understand the virulent spore that’s overtaken the earth and turned its hosts into zombies. With understated, elegant prose and strikingly humane descriptions of Melanie’s relationships with the adults around her, M.R. Carey adds depth and heft to his zombie thriller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Comics writer Carey (Lucifer) delivers an entertaining take on several well-worn zombie tropes. Years after the requisite zombie apocalypse (this time caused by a mutant strain of an ant-killing fungus, probably the book's most original touch), scientists in a remote outpost in England are working on a cure by experimenting on a group of zombified children who retain some of their original emotions and cognitive functions. Although Carey piles on the clich s (beyond the apocalypse and the recently trendy intelligent zombies, there are rogue survivalists straight out of The Walking Dead, scientists willing to cross ethical lines, and the ever-silly notion that people would use any term other than "zombies" to refer to the undead), he builds well-constructed characters particularly Melanie, one of the zombified children, who comes across as cognitively and emotionally different from the other characters, without feeling like an offensive parody of a person with Asperger's. The requisite action sequences are also well constructed, and the book will appeal to fans of zombie fiction.
Customer Reviews
One of the best of its genre
After having first seen the movie I decided to try the book. The movie closely follows the story line of the book so if you enjoyed the film then you will more than likely enjoy reading this apocalyptic tale of a killer zombie virus. I have read many of the written works in this genre and watched just about every movie pertaining to zombies and I must say that I am quite impressed. Read a sample and see if you can put it down. Good luck.
Yuck
Story is gross, but promising. The end was a let down. I’m glad I didn’t pay the $10 for it and waited til it was on sale.
Wonderful
It’s been stated that this is a young adult novel but as an older adult I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.