why did it have to be zombies?

[jazzfish]

Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth

I picked this up at the local Borders Everything Must Go sale, on the grounds that it's got a great title and I remembered someone saying good things about it. (Turns out that was tam_nonlinear, who likes this sort of thing.)

"Oh," I said, three pages in, "a zombie book. I hate zombie books."

This one starts out as my kind of zombie book, though. Conspiracies and secrets and history, plus plenty of teen angst.

If it'd stuck with that I would have been happy... but the zombies attack about a third of the way through, and for the rest of the book the small band of survivors have to make their way through the eponymous Forest. When your characters are fighting and running for their very lives there's not much opportunity to reveal deep worldbuilding secrets.

As zombie books go, it's a good one. There's a genuinely horrifying scene involving an infected infant, and some great tension. But by the end I was just plain worn out. Much like the characters. If I were the target audience for this book, I'd probably like it a great deal. As it stands I may read the sequels for the worldbuilding, but I can't see myself rereading this one at all.

Comments

[tam_nonlinear]

Actually, I found the zombies to be the least irritating part of the book- I liked it, and I'd lend you the sequel if you're interested, but I was fairly irritated with the main character through much of the story. There is someone trying to eat your brains, right now, and you're wondering if the boy you like really likes you or maybe he really likes someone else and- hello, the walking dead are calling for your blood, how about a little perspective? The second book isn't nearly as bad as that, and does more world-building, but these are absolutely in the light entertainment genre, if books with flesh-eating undead can be called such.

I like post-apocalyptic fiction in general, mostly because I tend to be fascinated by how people survive and normalize to strange, new conditions.

[jazzfish]

That, surprisingly, didn't bother me so much, mostly because the shambling dead were shambling on the other side of a fairly sturdy (until The Plot required otherwise) fence.

If I weren't in a situation right now where my choice of reading material is based entirely on "do i really want to move this 3000 miles?" I would absolutely take you up on the offer of the sequel.

I like postapocalyptic lit pretty well, but not so much when the apocalypse is suddenly bearing down on them all again. I dunno. There's a difference between "everything sucks, let's make the best of it" and "everything sucks and we're about to die omg."

[tam_nonlinear]

Well you know, you can return it to me if you can read it before you leave.

[jazzfish]

Ah, sorry. I meant I need to read through the books that I have and either haven't read, or haven't read recently, that they may be judged worthy or not of the 3000-mile trip.

[thanate]

I read an interview with the author a couple months before it came out, in which she was talking about how it's a post-post-apocalyptic book: the apocalypse has come and gone, and while in a lot of post apocalyptic things there's still some tie to the way it all was before (or at least people around who remember it) she wanted to build a world where this is all anyone really remembers. My archaeo-historical brain got all excited about that, and expected something like Martha Wells' City of Bones.

I was horribly disappointed to read it and find out it was a loose-ends-dangling horror aesthetic novel that got interrupted by zombies every time something interesting looked like it was about to happen.

[jazzfish]

That sounds about like my reaction, with the caveat that the first third or so really /is/ post-post-apocalyptic, and might well have turned out to be that kind of book. If only the zombies hadn't attacked.

(And I really need to reread City of Bones. I haven't done so since about a year after it came out, and all I remember is the marsupial-descendants who got really squicked at the thought of hiding anything in their pouches.)

[thanate]

re:City of Bones, yes, you should. (if you haven't got it yet, she has both that and Element of Fire up on Lulu.) Also, if you haven't read her latest, I think you'd take to it-- it's partly a book about finding one's community and wondering if you're too late to fit in properly, working from the author's experience with SFF fandom. (though it reads fine without that angle)

[faekitty.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on zombie books!The only one I have read that I like is The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.

[jazzfish]

I've actually not read any of Moore's stuff. I know, I know; there just hasn't been time in my reading schedule.