Fiction
Orbit
June 10, 2014
Paperback
416
NOT EVERY GIFT IS A BLESSING. 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 pointing 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. The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.
WrensReads Review:
“Heartfelt… painfully human” Joss Whedon
side note: I will read anything that Whedon endorses. He wrote the gold mine that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and lovely shows like Dollhouse and then movies like Avengers and.. he knows what is what people!
Back to the book.
This is not a horror book.
I know it is marked as a horror book, and there is some gore in it I guess, but it isn’t graphic or creepy or really scary to begin with.
This IS a zombie book though; or in the books terms, a “hungrie” book.
Melanie is a zombie. A zombie child, to be more specific. She is enclosed in a military base with other children like her. She gets strapped to a chair every morning, and gets put in a classroom to be taught by various teachers. Her favorite being Miss. Justineau.
Miss. Justineau loves the children. She believes that they are still human in a way (which could strongly be due to the fact that she is covered in chemicals that mask her human smell so the children don’t try to eat her) and that they should be treated as such. She is widely known as the lady who pushes the limits because she actually touches the kids and speaks to them and teaches them and reads to them like they are actually children.
Caldwell is on the verge of a break through. She is trying to figure out why these children can talk and feel and be taught about different things while there are hungries out there that are only “activated” when they smell something good to eat. She gets into different kids heads and studies the tissue and the make of their brains trying to figure it out. She is this close though.
Parks is the muscle. He makes sure the children are strapped to the chairs and not making any fuss. When someone needs a kid, he gets a team in, usually including his main shooter young Gallagher, and gets them. He keeps the perimeter in check and makes sure no one gets in.
So what happens when a bunch of junkers (human people living off the land outside the wall) run a herd of hungries into the perimeter and making the people and 1 hungrie child above escape together and try to make their way to another base? Do they all survive? What exactly is the reason Melanie is so different? Do they even make it to the other base? What about all the hungries?
This book is written in different perspectives in the third person. I would have to say, in my opinion, that Melanie is probably the only reason why I kept reading. She is the most interesting part of this book and the reason why this book has probably gotten all the attention it did.
The writing is an above average write but the book starts to drag a little in the middle. It is worth getting through and really, I didn’t expect the ending and I thought that was a pretty good way to end the book. I would actually read this book again happily after a while and would recommend it!
I think there is a movie coming out about this book. I’ll be watching that and seeing how they do!
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