Someone Like Me

by M. R. Carey
500 pgs

In the opening scene of Someone Like Me, Liz Kendall and her ex-husband Marc, an ex-marine with a propensity for violence, get into an argument about his returning their two children, 16-year-old Zac and 6-year-old Molly, to her late again. As the argument progresses, unsurprisingly to Liz, it becomes physical and Marc knocks her to the floor and begins to choke her. But what is surprising to Liz (and to Marc) is the fact that she fights back this time. She gets ahold of a bottle, breaks it, and shoves it into Marc's face. The wound is significant, but not deadly, and the evening ends with the police taking Marc away and Liz comforting Zac and Molly.

But the events of the evening to continue to haunt Liz for the rest of the night, and not simply because of what Marc tried to do to her, but because of what she tried to do to him, and because of the way she felt when she did. When Marc had her on the floor, with his hands around her neck, Liz felt like she became a spectator in her own body, no longer in control of her body as she ground the broken bottle into his face.

Fran Watts is a 16-year-old girl who was kidnapped when she was a toddler by a deranged man named Bruno Picota. Although she was quickly rescued and returned to her family, she has suffered from PTSD ever since. The trauma also left her with an an imaginary companion named Jinx and a unique perception of the world around her. Sometimes, when she looks at things, what she sees "shift," almost as if she can see both it and a shadow version of it at the same time. Fran and Zac are classmates, and when Fran meets Liz, it happens again. She sees two separate and distinct versions of Liz.

Someone Like Me is a ghost story, but not your typical ghost story. It's smart and eerie, and Carey keeps the pace moving along throughout the story. It's the third book I've read by him, and while I'm still waiting for him to right a book as good as The Girl With All the Gifts, this one was still really enjoyable.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Boy on the Bridge

by M.R. Carey
392 pgs  (The Girl with All the Gifts series #2)

The Boy on the Bridge is a prequel to M.R. Carey’s fantastic book TheGirl with All the Gifts. It tells the story of the Rosalind Franklin, the heavily-armed mobile laboratory that was found abandoned in The Girl with All the Gifts. The Rosalind Franklin was sent out from the city of Beacon on a last-ditch effort to analyze the Cordyceps fungus in order to try to synthesize a cure for the infection turning humans into mindless “hungries.”

The crew consists of ten members, half of them military personnel, the other half, scientists. Included among the scientists is 15-year-old Stephen Greaves, the scientific genius responsible for developing the chemical blocker that prevents hungries from picking up the scent of the uninfected. Greaves is a prodigy, and while it’s never confirmed in the book, he’s also clearly autistic. He can’t stand to be touched by others, is seemingly incapable of telling an untruth, and he deals with everything around him like it’s a scientific puzzle waiting to be solved.

I’m not going to say anything about the plot, since doing so would spoil too much of the story of both books. If you’ve read The Girl with All the Gifts—and even though this is a prequel to that one, you should still read that one first--, much of the plot of this one is going to be a foregone conclusion before you even start reading. Even though that’s the case, The Boy on the Bridge is still well worth the time to read. Carey is a fantastic story teller! His characters are three-dimensional and the story he places them in are compelling and wholly entertaining.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Girl with All the Gifts

by M.R. Carey
403 pgs  (The Girl with All the Gifts series #1)

Melanie is a highly-intelligent 10-year-old girl, who wakes up every morning in a military prison cell. Before the guards, who come every morning to take her to class, will enter her cell, she’s instructed to sit in a wheelchair and not move. When she does, guards enter her cell, and while one of them keeps his gun pointed at her, two others strap her wrists and ankles to the chair and place a muzzle securely over her face. She’s then taken to class, where she joins 20 or so other similarly-restrained children, and learns to read, do math, and listens to stories about the world outside her cell, a world she has no memories of. But the world outside her cell is nothing like the stories she’s told. That’s because twenty years ago, the zombie apocalypse took place.

The world is now full of “hungries,” humans who wander aimlessly around until they pick up the scent of an uninfected. When that happens, they turn into ravenous monsters, who will pursue their prey until they catch them and feed. But Melanie and the other children at the military base are different from the rest of the hungries. For some reason, when they became infected, their brain didn’t stopped working. They’re just like everyone else, until they pick up the scent of an uninfected. It’s only then that they temporarily become feral monsters, hence the muzzles and restraints.

I don’t want to give any more of the story away. If it was a bad story, I wouldn’t hesitate. But this is far from a bad story. It was surprisingly fantastic. Despite the proliferation of zombie stories in the media today, M.R. Carey has successfully managed to write one that is refreshing and unique. It’s character driven, and mostly by the character of young Melanie, a zombie.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆