The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Mary is living in a small, isolated village in the middle of what she calls the Forest of Hands and Teeth. She is hoping that a boy she has been friends with for a long time, Travis, will choose to court her and they will marry in the Spring. Unfortunately, it is Harry, Travis’s brother and Guardian-in-training who seems to be interested in Mary. Mary doesn’t know if she will be happy with Harry, and worries what will happen both if he does choose her, and if he doesn’t. These are Mary’s biggest problems until her mother, while searching for glimpses of her father, goes too close to the fence and is bitten. She becomes infected, and must be sent out into the forest with the other Unconsecrated. Furious with her for allowing this to happen, Mary’s brother Jed disowns her, Harry abandons her, and Mary is forced to live with the Sisterhood, the order of nuns which has sheltered and protected the village since the Return, and also controls all the information and keeps all the secrets about the world outside the fence–and the zombies the fence keeps out.

I thought this was a pretty good zombie book. It was interesting to read a book about how life is going on “after” the zombie apocalypse, instead of during it. I also really liked the way the Sisterhood controlled the town through religion and led everyone to believe they were the last people on Earth. I wish this theme would have been explored more. While Mary is living in the Cathedral with the Sisters, she is overcome with curiosity, and feels she must know what they are hiding, and what’s really out there beyond the fence. But once zombies break through the fence and Mary is forced to flee with her brother and sister-in-law, best friend Cass, a small boy Jacob, her dog Argos, and the two boys who are vying for her affection, all thoughts of the Sisterhood disappear and Mary is simply focused on survival, finding the ocean her mother always told her about, and how she can fulfill her dream of being in love with Travis while being betrothed to Harry. The story warped into a typical YA love triangle. I was much more interested in the secrets the Sisterhood was keeping and why they were keeping them. How did they come to be in charge of this tiny village in the woods? Why do they call the zombies “The Return?” (that really bugged me). Where are they located? Why isn’t anyone else interested in what could be beyond the fence? We never receive answers to any of these questions, all of which I thought were much more intriguing than Harry and Travis.

I went back and forth about whether or not I liked Mary. On one hand, she was a whiny angsty teenager and at times I wanted to smack her and tell her to shut up. On the other hand, she did have a lot of things to whine about, like watching her mother turn into a zombie, and her brother throwing her out of her house. And watching her become obsessed with the outside world and finding the ocean at the expense of everything and everyone around her–basically, her descent into madness–was particularly compelling. The rest of the characters, though, were bland and extremely boring. I have no idea why Mary was so obsessed with Travis, and liked him better than Harry. They sounded to me like the same person. I couldn’t even tell you if they looked different. Towards the end of the book, we finally get a glimpse into the mind of Travis, and find out he is a person with hope at the very least, but still, that’s not much. If so much of the book was going to be spent on that small group and their trying to survive in the forest, I should have felt emotionally attached to all the characters. Instead, I kept finding myself wondering what was happening back in the village, if there were more villages/people out there, and where in the United States they were located.

I picked up this book because a librarian saw me looking at it and strongly recommended it. I did like it, and would recommend it to anyone who likes a good zombie book. Just don’t get too excited about the conspiracy theories. I am intrigued to read the next book (I believe it’s a trilogy) as I would really like to find out what happened to some of the other characters. The second book in the series is called The Dead Tossed Waves and the third book is The Dark and Hollow Places.

Happy reading,

-Branwen

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

Joe Ledger is a Baltimore detective who recently finished a stint with a counter-terrorism group. He has an outstanding military career, moved quickly through the ranks of the Baltimore police department, and has his eye on a job with the FBI. Then, during a relaxing beach visit, two FBI thugs come and take him to a warehouse several hours from the beach. There, he meets Mr. Church, who tells him he is being recruited into a special branch of the government called the Department of Military Science (DMS), a counter terrorism group that specifically targets terrorist groups with bioweapons. Joe is told for his audition, he needs to subdue and handcuff the man in the adjoining room. Joe doesn’t think this audition will be too difficult, until he discovers that the man in the adjoining room is the same man he killed earlier in the week, only he’s not dead anymore. Joe survives his audition without a scratch, just a shattered world view. He takes the job with DMS and gets ready for a whole new kind of battle.

My first experience with supernatural horror was World War Z, a book I stupidly read at the beach a few summers ago. Terrifying zombie book in an unusual creaky house in a new location….the book was spectacular, but I didn’t sleep much that vacation. I’ve read a bunch of other decent zombie books since then, but Patient Zero was the first to have me hiding under the covers when the lights were off. This book was brilliantly written, because you can absolutely imagine it happening in real life. The characters were so believable, especially Amirah, the actual mad scientist. Wow, she was creepy. Gault, the evil mastermind was rather scary as well, but nothing could top the scene of Amirah pressing her face against the glass to be as close as possible to her freaky zombie creations. Having good protagonists is certainly important to make a novel shine, but antagonists that are truly evil who you can’t get out of your head afterwards can be even better.

Speaking of protagonists, our main “good guy” Joe Ledger is also well written. Sometimes the way characters react to having their entire world view turned on it’s side is predictable and dull. Ledger’s reaction wasn’t, which made it even more realistic. While he did take charge of the situation and become the leader the mysterious Mr. Church needed him to be, he was also still freaked out and overwhelmed by the whole situation, as evidenced by him dragging his psychologist and best friend Rudy into a top secret government mission. And his occasionally being so horrified he had to go throw up, something I can imagine myself doing quite often when presented with the living dead. I liked the relationship between him and Grace as well, and watching Grace go from disliking him immensely to trusting him with her life. She is an interesting character, and we don’t get to learn much of her back story. I hope she’s around in the next novel.

This ridiculously creepy photo came up when I was searching for cover images for Patient Zero. So I thought I would just leave it here for you.

I thought it was cool that the “zombie virus” in this story was an intentional bioweapon, not an accident or a mystery. I think that made the villains even scarier, thinking someone would intentionally destroy people like this. And that everyone working around that mad scientist thought it was a good idea! Really makes me feel like looking over my shoulder and being careful what I breathe, haha.

This was my first Jonanthan Maberry novel, and now I have discovered that he has written tons of supernatural horror. I will definitely be checking out some of his other books. During daylight hours. When there are other people around. So I feel safe.

Happy reading,

-Branwen

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

The monsters are real. Alice Bell can’t quite believe it, but she’s seen them, and now she knows her dad wasn’t as crazy as she thought. Feeling responsible for the death of her family, Alice knows she has to do something to fight the evil that destroyed her life. Then she meets Cole Holland, another teen who knows the truth about the dead that walk at night. Together, Alice and Cole continue the war between good and evil that slayers and zombies have been fighting for decades.

I don’t read zombie books very often. I read World War Z awhile ago and it scared the beejeezus out of me. But I couldn’t resist a book that promised inspiration from the world of Alice in Wonderland AND zombies at the same time. The story was not what I expected. The “style” of zombies was different than any I had read before: walking corpses whose spirits (not bodies) are infected with the evil zombie disease, and it’s that evil spirit that fights the spirits of the slayers, who are also the only people that can see the zombies walk. Very cool concept, I thought, and one that was written well. I also liked Alice’s character. She suffered such tragedy, and reacted in a believable, logical way. She was also determined to seek her revenge and do everything she could do fix what she considered her mistake in whatever way possible. Finally, a female heroine who was smart, had common sense, and made logical, reasonable choices. Yay! I liked Alice’s friend Kat, too. I kept thinking she was not a person I would be friends with in real life, but then she would say something crazy, and I (like Alice) would think she was awesome. Cole was a great character too, who starts as the dark, mysterious, dangerous bad boy, who then breaks those stereotypes without turning into an unrealistic pile of romantic mush. Great job with character development, Gena Showalter.

There were a few things I didn’t like so much about this book. While I thought the three main characters were well-developed and fun to read about, I thought there were other plot points that were not made very clear. For example, (SMALL SPOILER AHEAD) Dr. Wright ended up being a traitor/double-agent. I think this was supposed to be shocking, but since we never really got to know Dr. Wright, I just thought “OK, whatever” and moved on. There were a few other moments like that. This was cleverly disguised by how much I liked the characters, so I didn’t really notice the plot holes until, well, now, when I sat back and really thought about it. I suspect many of these plot holes will be cleared up in the next book, so I’m not super bothered by them. I believe the next book, Through the Zombie Glass, releases in October of this year. It’s going to be a long wait!

Happy reading,

-Branwen