Tag Archives: zombies

Take A Peek Book Review: The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

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“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Seventeen-year-old Aderyn (“Ryn”) only cares about two things: her family and her family’s graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meager existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don’t always stay dead.

The risen corpses are known as “bone houses,” and legend says that they’re the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good?

Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the deeply-buried truths about themselves. Equal parts classic horror novel and original fairytale, The Bone Houses will have you spellbound from the very first page.

My Thoughts:

Before picking up The Bone Houses, my thoughts were (a) pretty cover!! and (b) yet another zombie story. Well, I was correct about the cover, but The Bone Houses is far from an ordinary book about zombies! In fact, I’d classify this more as a fantasy story than horror, because while there are dead who rise, the story is really about the magical elements and the legacy left behind by the departed fae rulers of the land.

Ryn is a marvelous lead character, strong and dedicated to her family, not afraid to use her axe to defend her town and the people she loves from the dead who rise by night and come into the village. But why are the dead walking, and what do they want? These aren’t your horror movie zombies — there’s no chowing down on the living, for one thing. And while Ryn initially believes that they’re all on the attack, she soon learns that there’s more to them then meets the eye.

Once Ellis arrives, he and Ryn form a partnership to discover what’s really going on and find a way to stop it. There’s more to Ellis’s story than is apparent at first, and as he and Ryn share their stories, both trust and deeper feelings develop between them.

To love someone was to lose them. Whether it was to illness or injury or the passage of time.

It was a risk, to love someone. To do so with the full knowledge that they’d leave someday.

Then to let go of them, when they did.

I loved this book! The magical elements are well done, and there are some ruminations on life and death and the meaning of it all that are quite lovely. Plus, lots of terrific surprises and some truly scary action moments. Highly recommended.

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The details:

Title: The Bones Houses
Author: Emily Lloyd-Jones
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date: October 15, 2019
Length: 353 pages
Genre: Fantasy/horror/YA
Source: Purchased

Book Review: Feedback (Newsflesh, #4) by Mira Grant

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There are two sides to every story…

We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we unleashed something horrifying and unstoppable. The infection spread leaving those afflicted with a single uncontrollable impulse: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, a team of scrappy underdog reporters relentlessly pursue the facts while competing against the brother-and-sister blog superstars, the Masons.

Surrounded by the infected, and facing more insidious forces working in the shadows, they must hit the presidential campaign trail and uncover dangerous truths. Or die trying.

Feedback is a full-length Newsflesh novel that overlaps the events of the acclaimed first novel in the series, Feed, and offers a new entry point to this thrilling and treacherous world.

Okay, first things first: DO NOT pick up Feedback thinking that you can start the Newsflesh books at this point. I would absolutely not consider Feedback “a new entry point”, as the blurb says. Instead, it’s a story set within the world of Newsflesh, telling a story that parallels the story of Feed (book #1 in the series). A knowledge of the world of Newsflesh is required in order to enjoy Feedback… and Feedback will absolutely spoil the original trilogy for you. So there — we’ve gotten the warnings and disclaimers taken care of right from the start!

So basically, the deal is this: Feedback starts at about the same point in time as Feed, 20 years after the Rising, just as the presidential campaign is kicking off. The Masons — stars of the original Newsflesh trilogy — are the stars of the blogging world, and have just gotten the sweet gig of following the Republican candidate expected to grab the nomination, and maybe even the White House. Meanwhile, in Feedback, we meet Ash North, an Irish expatriate who’s an “Irwin” — a daredevil blogger who goes out in the field and pokes zombies — along with her team. Ash and company would love to be anything close to as successful as the Masons, but they remain in the crowded field of lesser bloggers until they get chosen to accompany one of the Democratic candidates, Governor Susan Kilburn.

Ash is a sassy redhead, married platonically to her partner Ben and in love with her other partner Audrey. Along with their techie/makeup guru Mat, they hit the road with the campaign, and immediately find themselves in all sorts of horrifying and life-threatening disaster situations. With lots of zombies. And death. And zombies. And carnage. And, you know, zombies.

I was a little nervous about starting Feedback after reading some fairly negative reviews… but you know what? I liked it! While Feedback includes enough context to explain the origins of the zombie Rising and what’s happened since, it doesn’t feel like a repeat. It’s pretty cool getting another take on the events of the presidential campaign, as seen from the more limited viewpoint of Ash and friends. Ash, Ben, and Audrey stumble pretty quickly across similar clues to those unearthed by Georgia and Shaun in the first three books, but they don’t get as deeply involved in the ghastly conspiracies at play behind the scenes of the US political system.

The plot moves along quickly, and it was interesting to note the parallel events here, and to line those up with the events we know about from Feed and the later books. I liked Ash well enough to enjoy her company, and thought her relationships with Ben and Audrey were unusual enough to keep things fresh and different.

As a fan of The Walking Dead, I will mention that there was a section toward the end of the book that felt a bit too Negan-ish and Savior-y for me… but I suppose the idea of a strong, well-armed man taking over and setting up his own society, with himself at the center, isn’t that unusual for a post-apocalypse tale.

As always, Mira Grant’s writing is sparkly and shiny, alternating between describing scenes of incredibly disturbing zombie attacks (and yes, there are a few truly gruesome, terrible attacks in this book) and applying humor even to tense situations, so I never had to go too long without a laugh (or a snort or a chuckle)… in between wincing in horror, cringing at the gore, and being struck by the devastation to the characters’ souls.

Some light and not-so-light snippets:

“Hello, and welcome to the Huntsville Convention Center,” said the attendant. “We’re so very sorry that you’ve been exposed to a biohazard. Please, pick your preferred scent profile and drop the tabe into your shower as you enter. Your shampoo and body wash selections will be set to match.”

The all-terrain vehicle trundled through the woods like an armored bear: fast enough to be better than walking, bulky enough to make driving a continuous adventure, and sturdy enough to give no fucks when I overcompensated for the slopes and side-swiped a tree…

(what I pictured while reading those lines… )

I hoped [he] and the others had had a moment — just a moment, because sometimes a moment was everything in the world — to call their loved ones and say they were sorry, that they’d always known it would end like this, but that they’d been hoping it wouldn’t end quite so soon. There were always things left unsaid, undone, and I wanted, desperately, for them to have had the time to say at least a few of them.

Our part in this tale was done, and we were getting the hell out. Leave the lies to the living and the truth to the dead. Nothing ever stays buried for long.

 

I’m really glad that I read Feedback, and recommend it — but only if you’ve already read the other Newsflesh books. I love the world that Mira Grant has created, and reading Feedback allowed me to stay in it just a little bit longer.

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The details:

Title: Feedback
Author: Mira Grant
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: October 4, 2016
Length: 560 pages
Genre: Horror/science fiction
Source: Purchased

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Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection by Mira Grant

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Rise is a collection of eight novellas and short stories that are set within the world of the Newsflesh trilogy. (See my wrap-up post about Newsflesh here. Short version: Amazing.)

So what’s inside Rise? And should you read it? Read on for mini-reviews of each story… and as for whether you should read it, my answer is an unqualified YES… but only after you read the complete trilogy, or at least, enough to appreciate the context of these stories.

Onward…

The first few stories in the Rise collection are set at the very beginning of the Rising – and this is something we never see in the main books of the Newsflesh trilogy. Newsflesh is set decades after the onset of the initial Kellis-Amberlee outbreak, and while we learn through the characters’ conversations and memories what happened at that time, it’s something quite different to read the author’s stories set during the Rising. These stories are awful in their inevitability – we know what’s coming, and we know that nothing will stop it.

Countdown

It began nowhere. It began everywhere. It began without warning; it began with all the warning in the world. It could have been prevented a thousand times over. There was nothing that anyone could have done.

A chilling timeline of the end of the world, showing the last of the pre-Rising days and how the disaster came on step by step. In the Newsflesh novels, the events of 2014 are almost 30 years in the past. Here, in Countdown, we see first-hand what actually happened that awful summer, from the optimism of a potential cancer cure to an irreversible act of ecoterrorism, all leading to the mutation and spread of a pandemic that changed the world forever. We meet some familiar characters, and also see the people who are basically the founding fathers of the Kellis-Amberlee virus – the creators of the Kellis cure, meant to cure the common cold, and Marburg Amberlee, an engineered virus that can defeat even the most dire of terminal cancer cases. Countdown is scary and dramatic and gave me the biggest case of dread. We know what’s going to happen, but watching it unfold and knowing there’s no chance that it won’t end the way that it does is still somehow crazily fascinating and terrible.

Everglades 

The shortest piece in the collection, Everglades is a view of campus life in the first days after the reality of the zombie apocalypse has hit home, as seen through the eyes of a young grad student who recognizes the cruelty of the natural world. It’s a short, sad, and even beautiful story.

San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats

As Mira Grant points out in her introduction to this story, San Diego Comic Con is almost a perfect place to stage an outbreak. You have thousands of people crammed into a confined space, many costumed or so heavily made-up that it’s impossible to gauge their actual condition. There’s little to no cell reception inside the convention hall, so once disaster strikes, communication between those trapped and the outside world effectively ceases. And as we know from countless zombie TV shows and movies, all it takes is one infected person locked inside with everyone else to start a chain reaction. This story shows how the very last Comic Con turned from geeky delight to bloody mayhem, and the bravery of the assorted fanboys and fangirls who made a last stand.

The stories from this point forward take place after the events in the Newsflesh trilogy, or at least, close enough to them that a knowledge of those events is needed – and people who haven’t read the trilogy will end up with massive spoilers. That said, the next batch of stories are:

How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea

Before the Rising, guns were verboten on airplanes, carried only by government agents and representatives of local law enforcement. Now most passengers flew armed, and the flight attendants carried more weapons than your average Irwin. It’s funny how the world can change when no one’s looking.

In which our beloved head Newsie Mahir heads off to Australia to get a first-hand view of how that country and continent made it through the Rising. Australia is still Australia, meaning that it’s a country full of people who are used to living alongside deadly wildlife, and their approach to security in the post-Rising world is vastly different from the paranoid, fear-based approach adopted everywhere else.

“Why would someone who didn’t like the law live out here?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to move into the city, where there’s less risk of surprise zombie kangaroos?”

The story is entertaining and presents a view of a very different mentality, in a land where animal conservation still matters, even when those animals may amplify, turn into zombies, and eat you. A story that includes zombie kangaroos and wombats can’t help being a blast to read.

The Day the Dead Came To Show and Tell

It was a small, claustrophobic space. The shelves were packed with basic school supplies: paper, crayons, extra ammunition, formalin, bleach.

This story was the hardest to read in the collection. It just hits way too close to home right now. This story is about an outbreak in an elementary school, and unfolds moment by moment as the infection spreads, the school goes into lockdown, and one first-grade teacher faces the unthinkable as she tries to save her children. It’s awful. Fascinating and so well written, but awful just the same. With the seemingly never-ending wave of school shootings in this country, reading this story is just heart-breaking and way too relevant.

Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus

Dr. Shannon Abbey is one of the many great side characters in the Newsflesh trilogy, and in this story, we get to spend a little more time with her in her secret mad scientist lair. Dr. Abbey is smart, a little crazy, and lots of fun, and her story here collides with another character seen in an earlier piece in Rise. Plus, we get to see Joe the massive mastiff and Barney the octopus – two big plusses.

“I’m a mad scientist, aren’t I? We all have master plans. Without them, we’d just be faintly disgruntled scientists who think we really ought to form a committee to discuss our grievances.”

The next two (and final two) stories in Rise are new to this collection, the only two not to have been previously published either in anthologies or stand-alone versions.

All the Pretty Little Horses

All the Pretty Little Horses takes us back once again to the early days of the Rising. The year is 2018, and we’re back with Michael and Stacy Mason, who’ve become famous for their radio broadcasts giving survival tips and offering encouragement during the really bad years. Now that the world is starting to find a new normal, Stacy is plunged into depression, desperately mourning the young son lost  in the early days of the Rising. This story shows how the Masons became the people we meet in the Newsflesh trilogy, hardened stars of the blogosphere who’ll do anything for ratings. And while this story didn’t truly make me like them, at least it shows a bit more of the desperation that turned them into the people they became.

 

And finally…

Coming To You Live

This is it. The story we’ve all been waiting for. It’s about Shaun and Georgia, and… well, I’m just not going to say a word about it. No matter what I say, it’ll be spoilery. Let’s just say that it was a perfect end piece for the collection, and it left me just as in love with the characters and the overarching world of Newsflesh as before, or may just a smidge more.

And that’s all, folks!

Rise is essential reading for fans of Newsflesh – and if you’ve made it this far in my lengthy post, I’m assuming you’re a fan too! I’m a little bit heartbroken to have reached the end. Yes, I know there’s still the 2016 novel Feedback to read, but it’s not about the characters I know and love, and I’m just not ready to go there yet. I’ll read it eventually (or maybe even later this week), but for now I just want to bask in the glory of all things Newsflesh, and the amazing stories in Rise, just a little bit longer.

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The details:

Title: Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection
Author: Mira Grant
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: June 21, 2016
Length: 816 pages (mass market paperback)
Genre: Horror/science fiction
Source: Purchased

Thursday Quotables (on a Friday): Rise: A Newsflesh Collection by Mira Grant

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quotation-marks4

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines will be, and you’re invited to join in!

After a lengthy radio silence, I’m returning to Thursday Quotables! Although I’m not doing TQ posts on a weekly basis, I’ll still be popping in and out when I have some great lines that I’m dying to share.

Onward with this week’s Thursday Quotables:
Rise: A Newsflesh Collection by Mira Grant
(published 2016)

After finishing the Newsflesh trilogy earlier in the week, I really hated the idea of leaving it all behind. Luckily, there’s Rise, a collection of short fiction set in the Newsflesh world. I’m only about 100 pages into this 600+ page paperback… but I’m loving it, of course. I hadn’t actually planned to do another TQ post this week, but then I came across the passage below, and knew that I had to share it.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m that high school geek who actually loved A Tale of Two Cities and memorized the opening lines (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…) just for fun. And yes, I can still recite most of it, all these years later.

With that as background, here’s a passage from Rise that jumped out at me:

It began nowhere. It began everywhere. It began without warning; it began with all the warning in the world. It could have been prevented a thousand times over. There was nothing that anyone could have done.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

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Series wrap-up: The Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant

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Wow.

I just finished binge-reading Mira Grant’s amazing trilogy, Newsflesh (consisting of Feed, Deadline, and Blackout), and all I can say is — what the hell took me so long? I’d been hearing for years that these books are must-reads. What in the bloody hell was my problem?

Sigh. Better late than never, right?

The fact is, for whatever reason, I must have head my head under a rock in 2010, 2011, and 2012… but here it is, the opening months of 2018, and I’m soooooo darned happy that I finally devoured these books.

For the uninitiated: What’s it all about?

As the blurb for Feed says:

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop.

Short version: A zombie uprising. When the viruses meant to cure cancer and the cold accidentally mingle upon release into the world, they combine into something deadly, known as Kellis-Amberlee, a virus that causes the dead to rise and eat people. But somehow, humanity survives — a smaller, more frightened, vastly security conscious slice of humanity, but still, the rising has been overcome, and life goes on, although the world is permanently changed.

In the world of Newsflesh, the most reliable source of news in a dangerous and secretive world is the blogging community. After all, they were the first to tell the truth when mainstream media outlets called the initial reports of zombies merely Internet hoaxes. If not for the bloggers, the realization of what was really happening, and what it would take to stay alive, might have come too late. Now, 20+ years after the rising, bloggers are the stars of the media and the most trusted source of news, and our main characters, brother and sister Shaun and Georgia Mason, are the cream of the crop.

Shaun and Georgia live for the truth and the truth alone. Their lives become infinitely more complicated when they’re chosen to be embedded with a candidate on the presidential campaign trail. Shaun and Georgia see this as a huge ratings boost, a way to finally reach the top tier and go independent. They don’t expect to be drawn into a shadow world of conspiracies and danger, risking everything they stand for as well as each other and their teams of trusted colleagues.

I really don’t want to give too much away, so I won’t go into detail about the series as a whole or where the plot goes. Suffice it to say that the plot twists always caught me off guard, and for a book about the zombie apocalypse, there were way more laughs and tears than I would have imagined. I came to love the characters, not just Shaun and Georgia, but also their friends and allies who fight by their side and share their commitment to the truth, no matter what. Okay, I loved Shaun and Georgia 10x more than anyone else, but that’s just because they’re so completely awesome.

I’ll admit that the scientific/medical/virological jargon and discussions often warped my brain, as I had to super-concentrate to decipher what the hell these people were trying to say. The effort is worth it. Mira Grant has put together a scary, crazy, complicated world, where viruses are deadly, but so is ignorance and inattention.

I’ve read complaints about the repetition of certain details throughout the books, particularly how the characters constantly have to undergo blood tests every time they enter or exit just about any place. I, for one, think this is fabulous. It’s the very repetition of the constant blood tests, and how the characters treat them as a normal fact of life, that shows us just how very different this world is. Safety is never taken for granted. Knowing one’s status as uninfected only lasts until the next test — you never know when you might become infected, or when the virus living inside you might spontaneously amplify (meaning you go full zombie with no apparent triggering event). The blood tests are just one small element in these masterfully constructed books that show us what a world might be like after the unthinkable becomes a reality.

Let’s also stop to appreciate the snappy dialogue and funny bits throughout the books. Shaun and Georgia and the rest of their team have the kind of closeness that means they know each other to the core, and that’s conveyed through their banter and ability to finish one another’s thoughts and read the fear and worries underneath the jokes and quips. And plus, there are just some things that are so awful that they’re funny. Okay, like a zombie bear. Or being afraid of zombie raccoons. I mean, that’s funny stuff!

I tore through these books, and just could not stop. I really and truly loved them, start to finish, and I’m thrilled to learn that there are more stories in the Newsflesh world! First, there’s a collection of various stories originally released as separate e-novellas (Rise, published 2016). Also in 2016, Grant published the novel Feedback, which is apparently set during the same period as Feed, but focusing on different characters. I’m less excited for that one (did I mention my love for Shaun and Georgia yet?), but I’ll read it anyway, because right this very minute, having just finished Blackout, I’m absolutely not ready to leave this world behind.

For anyone, like me, who didn’t have the brains (zombie joke!) to jump on board when Feed was first released… well, it’s never too late. I loved this trilogy, and I hope you will too!

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Book details:

Feed – 599 pages, published 2010
Deadline – 584 pages, published 2011
Blackout – 512 pages, published 2012

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Thursday Quotables: Deadline (Newsflesh trilogy, #2)

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Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines will be, and you’re invited to join in!

After a lengthy radio silence, I’m returning to Thursday Quotables! Although I’m not doing TQ posts on a weekly basis, I’ll still be popping in and out when I have some great lines that I’m dying to share. And this week’s Quotables are pretty terrific!

Onward with this week’s Thursday Quotables:
Deadline by Mira Grant
(published 2011)

I’m loving the Newsflesh trilogy! I’m on the 2nd book, and it’s amazing. The plot is startling and surprisingly moving — and, you know, filled with zombies. I love the writing, which manages to be funny even in the most horrific of situations. Here are a few choice selections:

Road trips must have been pretty boring before the zombies came.

There’s nothing funnier than seeing somebody who thinks of the infected as somebody else’s problem realize that they, too, could join the mindless zombie hordes.

About zombies on the roof of a building that they couldn’t have accessed without intervention:

“Meaning what?” I asked, picking myself up and resuming the trek toward the third floor.

Meaning this “outbreak” is somebody’s idea of cleaning house.

“Somebody had to put them there,” said Dave, unknowingly supporting George’s statement. “There’s no way our building is generating spontaneous zombies.”

I just find it interesting that kids apparently used to cry when Bambi’s mother died. George and I both held our breaths, and then cheered when she didn’t reanimate and try to eat her son.

At least no one was screaming; that meant we’d all probably managed to live through the night. Survival is always a nice thing to wake up to.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

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Book Review: The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey

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In the 2014 book The Girl With All the Gifts, author M. R. Carey introduced us to a terrifying world in which humanity has been overrun by “hungries” — humans turned into zombies after being infected by a virulent and unstoppable fungus. At an isolated army base in England, a military and medical crew work with a bunch of young hungries, who seem to be a different sort of species, still drawn to flesh for sustenance but able to speak, think, and feel as humans do. (If you haven’t read The Girl With All the Gifts, you need to check it out! My book review is here. The movie is worth seeing too!)

The new release The Boy on the Bridge is a prequel to The Girl With All the Gifts, set about 10 years earlier. Humanity has already been decimated by the Hungry plague, and the remaining humans in England live in a barricaded settlement called the Beacon. The Beacon sends out a team of scientists and soldiers in an armored vehicle, the Rosalind Franklin, to travel the country, collect samples, and search for some sort of cure or treatment for the plague — likely a hopeless cause.

The crew is an uneasy mix of career soldiers and geeky scientists, plus a gifted teen boy, Stephen Greaves, who is considered by most of the crewmembers to be possibly autistic, definitely odd, and generally a burden. The exception to this is Dr. Samrina Khan – Rina — who insisted on bringing Stephen along for the mission, and who acts as a surrogate mother to the boy. Stephen is brilliant, and Rina considers him to be crucial to any chance of making a scientific breakthrough.

We spend the entire book on the journey aboard Rosie, getting to know the crew as they bump along the countryside in very cramped quarters. There are rivalries and resentments, and the enormous pressure of knowing that they may be humanity’s last hope. The team is constantly in danger as well. Beyond taking samples, they venture outside of Rosie’s safety to do cullings along the way — basically, using their firepower to mow down as many hungries as possible.

The scenes of dormant hungries just standing wherever they happen to be, motionless and inert until triggered by movement or smell, are frightening and creepy. The danger is always present, and the reading experience can be almost as claustrophobic as it must be traveling inside Rosie.

I found the book to be slow at first, as it takes a while to get to know the twelve team members as individuals, and the first half or so of the book occasionally feels like one really unpleasant road trip. However, once the team encounters a group of feral children, the tension and the mystery definitely amp up. Who are these children, and where did they come from? What do they want… and can they be stopped? Meanwhile, Stephen and Rina each have secret agendas, and as the plot moves forward, their struggles become the central focus.

I spent much of the book wondering how this story would connect to The Girl With All the Gifts, and by the end, it becomes clear in a way that’s satisfying. The climax is action-packed and dramatic, and I was happy with the resolution presented in the epilogue.

I wouldn’t rate this one as high as the first book, but I did find it an enjoyable, entertaining read. Needless to say, it’s not for the squeamish — but if you enjoy a good twist on a a zombie apocalypse, check out The Boy on the Bridge.

Side note: The title doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, and neither does the book’s synopsis as it appears on Goodreads. So ignore those, and just read the book anyway!

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The details:

Title: The Boy on the Bridge
Author: M. R. Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: May 2, 2017
Length: 392 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher

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Thursday Quotables: The Boy on the Bridge

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quotation-marks4

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey
(release date 5/2/2017)

Last week, I went with a classic from the late 1800s. So naturally, this week just has to be zombies! I’m about 2/3 done with this new release (set in the same world as the terrific, horrifying The Girl With All the Gifts), and it’s pretty engrossing. (En-GROSS-ing. I make myself laugh). Here’s a little description from early on in the story:

Here and there in the broad valley, at every elevation and regardless of the terrain, human figures stand; their arms hanging at their sides, their heads mostly bowed at an angle on their necks. They stand up to their calves or knees in thistles, mud, bracken, water. They wear faded and ragged clothes made piebald by the rust of old bloodstains. They look for all the world like sleepwalkers about to wake up.

And that’s what they are, Khan thinks. Except that they won’t wake, ever. The human minds that once inhabited these carcases will slumber on for always. If they open their eyes, something else entirely will be looking out.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

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Book Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

Posted in Book Reviews by

WWZ

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. “World War Z” is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

First things first:

  1. This book is brilliant; and
  2. This book has very little to do with the movie it inspired.

I was finally drawn to World War Z (the book) after watching World War Z (the movie) last week. The book version of WWZ has been on my shelf for at least 7 or 8 years. It’s not that I regretted buying it or wasn’t interested — I just never was in the right mood to actually tackle it.

Well, this week, the mood was finally right… and all I can say is holy f*cking wow.

Max Brooks has created an “oral history of the Zombie War”, a riff on the Studs Terkel masterpiece The Good War. In WWZ, Brooks creates an utterly plausible history of a world-devastating war that came close to the annilihation of the human race. The book is told through interviews, a series of conversations with people from around the globe who, in one way or another, witnessed or experienced some small piece of the global catastrophe.

From first warnings through the “Great Panic” through all-out war and finally recovery, we hear tales from those who lived through it all. We hear from medical personnel and soldiers, politicians and scientists, bystanders and those in power, and each has a unique voice and a unique perspective.

Why do I consider this a brilliant book? If you leave aside the gruesome fact that we’re talking about a zombie apocalypse, World War Z could be a chronicle of any world war. Brooks does an incredible job of building the history brick by brick through his interviews, so that we don’t need any historical notes or side narratives in order to gain a full picture of the war’s progression. The author lets us see the experience as it unfolded for people living through the nightmare days, as well as through the lens of the statescraft and diplomacy that came into play between world leaders and other power brokers.

It’s fascinating to see the effect on both common people and the greater picture of the worldwide balance of power. Nations rise and fall as a result of the steps taken or ignored, and the world that remains by the end of the war is far different than the one that came before.

Of course, on top of the amazing lesson in political science… ZOMBIES. There are some truly gross, horrifying, nightmarish scenarios that play out throughout the book. Like, who ever thought that zombies could survive indefinitely under water? There’s a reason never to go scuba diving again (not that I’ve ever gone scuba diving). Or how about the fact that in the colder regions of the planet, zombies would freeze during the winter — but that spring thaw could be a real bitch.

I love that World War Z reads like a completely immersive non-fiction record, even though it is of course fictional. The author fully commits to the premise — no wink-wink snarkiness or sarcasm to remind us that this “history” never happened. It’s really an incredible reading experience, one I’d be tempted to recommend even to those who don’t typically enjoy horror. Yes, there’s plenty of ickiness, but the reflection of heroism and sacrifice is like looking at the best of the human spirit and how it rises to the top in times of true need.

A word on the movie: I didn’t think the movie version was bad (hello? Brad Pitt!), just really different. It’s a straight-narrative story of a zombie uprising, seen through the eyes of one man who is dispatched around the globe to try to fight it. Some scenes are really nightmare-inducing (I am not going to get the image of zombies swarming over the walls of Jerusalem out of my mind any time soon), but as a whole, it doesn’t have the grand scope of the book. Also, the ending may work as a movie dramatic climax, but (being vague here) the solution that Pitt’s character finds isn’t in the book at all.

Long story short: This book was first published 10 years ago, but I don’t think it has lost any of its impact. It’s really a remarkable storytelling achievement, and I urge anyone with a taste for this sort of thing to give it a try.

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The details:

Title: World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
Publisher: Crown
Publication date: September 12, 2006
Length: 342 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Purchased

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Thursday Quotables: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

P&P&Z

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
(published 2009)

I was a little stuck for a Thursday Quotables book this week. I’ve barely touched a book for the past 10 days, after a whirlwind family celebration (and plenty of houseguests). I’m listening to the audiobook version of Pride and Prejudice, and was happy to remember that I had this zombified version sitting on my shelf.

The classic opening, with a twist:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain that during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!