** warning this post may contain spoilers**
We all felt that the book was written in a very cinematic way and we're at all surprised that the author wrote a screenplay for the book at the same time as writing the book. There certainly were a lot of highly dramatic and often gory parts to the book that we felt would work well on screen as well as they did in the book. This was also made clear by the fact that the book was written in the present tense but not in first person which made the book feel really fast paced.
This book is said to be about zombies but some of the book club didn't notice this at all, they didn't realise that the monsters in the book were zombies. We had a discussion about whether they were zombies or whether they were more like a vehicle for the fungus, we felt that as they didn't technically die until the fungus had completely taken them over that they maybe weren't zombies. This was also shown a bit by the fact that some of the zombie like characters seemed to retain some of their humanity especially the newly made zombies.
We felt that the author was sympathetic to the zombies rather than painting them all as monsters with no control which was a different way to go compared to the monster books of old. It was interesting to have a human painted as the monster rather than the zombies, although as we discussed the book we wondered whether we would be on the side of the human monster (Caldwell) or the softer outlook that Miss Justineaux portrayed. It seemed that the book was more about the relationships between the different characters rather than them just constantly trying to escape the zombies. We especially liked the relationship between Melanie and Miss Justineaux, this seemed to be the central point to most of the middle of the book.
We felt that the characters in the book were obviously tropes of traditional horror story books with the army types, the softer sympathetic character, the hard scientifically oriented character etc. but they were so well written that we didn't really care how obvious they all were.
There were a few interesting moral dilemmas within the book such as the one that Gallagher faces, we wondered if we would do the same as he did. We also discussed whether humans have a right to carry on existing and when would you give up the fight and realise that maybe it's the right thing for humans to no longer exist, at least in their current format. The ending of the book we felt was hopeful for planet earth, if not entirely for humankind.
Overall we gave this book 8 out of 10.
We all felt that the book was written in a very cinematic way and we're at all surprised that the author wrote a screenplay for the book at the same time as writing the book. There certainly were a lot of highly dramatic and often gory parts to the book that we felt would work well on screen as well as they did in the book. This was also made clear by the fact that the book was written in the present tense but not in first person which made the book feel really fast paced.
This book is said to be about zombies but some of the book club didn't notice this at all, they didn't realise that the monsters in the book were zombies. We had a discussion about whether they were zombies or whether they were more like a vehicle for the fungus, we felt that as they didn't technically die until the fungus had completely taken them over that they maybe weren't zombies. This was also shown a bit by the fact that some of the zombie like characters seemed to retain some of their humanity especially the newly made zombies.
We felt that the author was sympathetic to the zombies rather than painting them all as monsters with no control which was a different way to go compared to the monster books of old. It was interesting to have a human painted as the monster rather than the zombies, although as we discussed the book we wondered whether we would be on the side of the human monster (Caldwell) or the softer outlook that Miss Justineaux portrayed. It seemed that the book was more about the relationships between the different characters rather than them just constantly trying to escape the zombies. We especially liked the relationship between Melanie and Miss Justineaux, this seemed to be the central point to most of the middle of the book.
We felt that the characters in the book were obviously tropes of traditional horror story books with the army types, the softer sympathetic character, the hard scientifically oriented character etc. but they were so well written that we didn't really care how obvious they all were.
There were a few interesting moral dilemmas within the book such as the one that Gallagher faces, we wondered if we would do the same as he did. We also discussed whether humans have a right to carry on existing and when would you give up the fight and realise that maybe it's the right thing for humans to no longer exist, at least in their current format. The ending of the book we felt was hopeful for planet earth, if not entirely for humankind.
Overall we gave this book 8 out of 10.
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