Unfortunately this book suffers from the fact that it comes after The Girl With All the Gifts, which is one of my all time favorites. My expectations were high, and it sort of failed to meet them.

This is the story of some of the first survivors of the disease that caused all the problems in TGWATG. Kind of like the literary answer to Fear the Walking Dead. We get to see what the world was like when the problem first began. Here we have a young man who is probably autistic, along with a knocked up scientist who is desperately trying to hide the fact that she is knocked up. They are on a government research vehicle, trying to figure out how to save the planet from the fungus.

It does answer some questions that were open-ended before, and I'm glad I read it. I just felt it lacked so much of the drama and action of its predecessor.

A dystopian world, the end of civilisation and a new take on zombies – what’s not to like? M R Carey’s latest novel THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE is a prequel to his earlier best-seller, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, a bleak coming of age novel which offers little hope for the doomed human race. So, not too many laughs in either case.
Carey explores a civilisation on the edge of destruction as an unstoppable fungal infection turns those infected into ‘Hungries’ – zombie-like automatons that feast on anything organic that moves, spreading the infection as they go. He not only creates a situation that has the potential to keep the reader on the edge of the seat, he also explores the moral dilemmas of survival when the odds seem so stacked against humanity as to be impossible.
The book opens with a team of soldiers and scientists, travelling in the armoured vehicle the Rosalind Franklin to collect scientific samples, and to observe the Hungries with fading hopes that they may yet find the key to survival – a cure, an immunisation, an efficient means of destroying the infection.
The people making up the party form a microcosm of what the world has become – the inadequate leader of the team, scientist Alan Fournier, reflecting the flawed leadership of the final community of survivors; Colonel Carlisle, the soldier who has followed too many bad orders and acted against his own moral code; Lieutenant McQueen, the arrogant soldier who thinks he has the answers. But these are not simply stereotypes. They are fully drawn characters whose actions and motivations are easy to understand. There is also the young woman scientist Sumrina Khan, pregnant against the rules and Stephen Greaves, the boy she has taken under a wing, a damaged savant, who may have found the key to the infection – a cure or a vaccination. But is the cost of this too high?
The narrative, which is satisfyingly full of twists, pursuits, dangers and discoveries makes for a gripping reading. Sometimes the writing fails to achieve the edge-of-the-seat tension such scenes demand. Carey is excellent at scene setting, at creating a sense of place and drawing his characters with precise concision, but the scenes of suspense sometimes remain a little distant, leaving the reader as disengaged observer rather than fully engaged participant.
Carey explores issues of choice, of moral dilemma and what it is to be truly human in a narrative that – because of what we already know from the earlier book – must surely end in apocalypse and death. THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE is a dark book, but not entirely devoid of hope, with enough depth to make it more than just another zombie chase tale.

A wonderful dive back into the world from The Girl with all the gifts.

A groupmof scientists are trying to stay alive and also study the changing world ruled by tge undead. I really liked the characters in this novel and the chilling action.

It's a slow beginning, but then it picks up. It also helps the reader to know that this is a prequel, not a sequel. All in all, one of my favorite books so far this year.

I loved The Girl with all the Gifts so I had to read this one too. This book is really hard to get into at first. I really had to push myself to keep reading because the action and the dialogue was so laborious it felt like walking through quicksand. The book picks up a lot after the first one hundred pages and it's pretty smooth sailing after that but the story just wasn't as good as TGWATG.

While I really enjoyed this book - it is not on the same as the Girl with all the Gifts. I didn't connect with the characters like I did Melanie and Miss Justineu.

I am going to start with talking a bit about reading order, I think both of The Boy on the Bridge and The Girl with All the Gifts can easily be read as stand-alones. The descriptions from the publishers are incredibly vague for both, which I tend to enjoy. That said, there is something about the world I had no idea of before reading The Girl With All the Gifts that gave an additional level of mystery and suspense that I think I could miss if I had known ahead of time. That has most likely been spoiled for most readers by this point, particularly with the movie and reading The Boy on the Bridge first will certainly take that bit of mystery away as well. But with that in mind, I would recommend reading The Girl With All the Gifts first if you plan to read both (and maybe skip this review and read my review for that book instead)

While I was reading this one, I was asked a couple of times if knowing the outcome of The Girl With All the Gifts (which is set after this) ruined my reading experience at all. I really don’t think it did. This is a new set of characters and circumstances that have a story of their own to tell and I never felt like having some knowledge of upcoming events lessened my level of interest for this story. And like I said earlier, I think if I had read this first, it might have slightly lessened the intrigue in The Girl with All the Gifts, so I am happy I read them in this order.

The Boy on the Bridge is centered mainly around a crew in a mobile lab. It is staffed with both military and scientists with a mission of understanding and hopefully curing this new plague that is overtaking the people. Once infected, people become what they call “hungries”. It’s basically just another name for zombies. Unthinking bodies that used to be human, but now think about nothing but feeding. And they have an overwhelming urge to feed on other people (and in turn infecting them). Their sole purpose becomes feeding, hence the name hungries.

The crew for Rosie (the nickname they have given their armored mobile lab) is quite diverse in personalities, which always makes for a more entertaining read. Dr. Rina Kahn is accompanied by her assistant Stephen Greaves. I don’t think Stephen is ever labeled autistic, but he clearly exhibits many of the traits often associated with autism, and other crew members refer to him as The Robot at times. But I enjoyed his perspective which gave insight into his thinking and really humanized him in way that may not be as evident from another person’s perspective. Stephen is also incredibly intelligent, developing the e-blocker that prevents hungries from smelling humans, giving the scientists a much needed layer of protection while doing their work.

And I hate to go into the plot too much with this one, particularly with as vague as the publisher kept their info on it. I will just say I enjoyed the blend of science and crew dynamics as well as the excitement and terror of the threats facing the team. I also enjoyed the level of hope they had that they could turn things around and find a cure. Did I love it quite as much as The Girl with All the Gifts? Well, maybe not, but that was an incredibly high bar for a book and when it comes down to it, I think the discoveries about the world in The Girl with All the Gifts is one aspect that edges that book a bit higher. That’s hard to replicate within the same world, so I can’t fault the second book. When it comes down to it, this was another fun and exciting book from Carey.

3.5 stars!

THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE s the, (at least for me), eagerly awaited prequel to THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS. This book tells the story of how the abandoned tank/lab they found in TGWAtG, the Rosalind Franklin, got to be where she was and what happened to her crew.

It also tells the story of a special boy on board, (who was possibly autistic?), along with the crew consisting of both military and civilian/scientific contingents. They are ordered out to reconnoiter and to collect lab samples. That's all I'll say about the plot.

In a way, this book is like TGWAtG, except instead of a special girl, we have a special boy. There is also the fact that we know the ending from the get-go, and I think that took away from the suspense a little bit. Lastly, I'm not sure all the science-y bits actually made sense, but even if they did I wasn't much interested in that aspect of the story. I'm more interested in the characters and whether or not they survive. Perhaps some sort of explanation was required, but I think it slowed the story down. I wanted to know more about Stephen and if what he had was actually autism or something else entirely.

The ending here scored BIG with me, though, and it made up for the times I thought the story was slow. Overall, I did enjoy the heck out of this story and I'm wondering if there will be another? If there is, sign me up now!

*Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is it!*

Way to hit it out of the park again! Fantastic read, highly recommend!

Interesting and engaging prequel to Girl with all the Gifts, although neither of the two main characters were quite as engaging nor as sympathetic for the reader as Melanie and her Miss Helen. I wish this book came out first. Knowing how it all ends after reading the first book does make the struggle less tension fraught. I'd recommend those new to the series to read this book first and then the Girl w/all the Gifts to heighten the tension and reader's emotional investment in the fate of the characters.

The events of THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE overlap with what happens in THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS. It isn’t necessary to have read the first book, there are definite points that will be less fun if you’re not caught up on what happened in the first book.

What I loved best about THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE was the the way the military and scientific communities played off each other. It was my favourite aspect of the original Day of the Dead film by Romero, and Carey perfectly captures the different outlooks and goals the two communities have, even when they are forced to work together for months at a time. They’re trapped inside an armoured vehicle for months, occasionally going out to collect samples (of flesh and brain from the hungries outside). The feeling of helplessness and claustrophobia are nearly overwhelming as the reader is taken along this ride.

The first book featured a very clever child with a twist, and so does this one. Stephen is brilliant, complicated and either autistic or suffering from PTSD. He was found on the way out of London, the corpses of his parents wrapped around him like a pair of parentheses protecting him from the hungries. He’s been taken in by one of the scientists and has since made multiple discoveries to protect humans, such as the gel that blocks sweat and body odor, allowing people to go out into infested areas without attracting attention. Some of his discoveries have also been claimed by other scientists, but he doesn’t care. He’s looking for a cure, not glory.

One of the best things about this series is that no one is sacred. With such a small cast of characters, readers feel each death profoundly, but there is no room for hurt feelings; just a plot that runs along, springing discovery or disaster one after another.

It’s hard to describe post-apocalyptic fiction as hopeful, but this book has so much good in it (and of course, evil to offset it). The entire thing had me gasping and clutching my hands as I read it, as powerless to resist the pull of the story as a hungry getting a whiff of a human being.

A very special thanks to Orbit/Hachette for sending me a review copy of this book! In exchange I will provide an honest review.

You all may remember that I was not a very big fan of the book THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS by M.R. Carey. The idea of a zombie infestation caused by a fungus was certainly interesting, but the plot progression itself wasn't something that was very interesting to me. At the very least we'd seen it before (a group of survivors, up until this point pretty insular, have to go into the world where the 'hungries' are), outside of the little girl who serves as a connection between the humans and the hungries, given that she herself exhibits both traits. THAT was cool. So because I did see the fascinating parts of that book in a positive light, I wanted to read the companion piece, THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE. It takes us back to that world, only ten years earlier.

Ten years before the events in THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, a mobile reinforced lab called the Rosalind Franklin is going through the hungries ravaged countryside. The team aboard is part scientific, part military, hoping to collect samples and specimens that could bring about a cure. Though the antagonistic Dr. Fournier is in charge, Dr. Samrina Khan is the heart of the science group, who has just found out that she is pregnant. Another science person on board is Stephen Greaves, an autistic teenager who also created the e-blocker that protects humans from hungries by stopping their scent. He may be the one to save humanity if he can find a cure. But the group is being followed, unbeknownst to them. Those following look like children, but are built like hungries. They may be the real key to the future of humankind.

So yes, since the Rosalind Franklin was discovered abandoned in THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS there is a bit of a foregone conclusion to how all of this is going to work out. But I still found THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE enjoyable, moreso than the original book in the series. For one, I like that it follows a mission that ultimately goes awry due to mistrust between two groups with different motives and understandings of what the primary objective is. That's usually something reserved for space horror. And like THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, Carey does a great job of making his main characters pretty well rounded and thought out. Usually people think that zombie books aren't about humanity at the core, but I argue that they most certainly are, and Carey knows this and takes care in building his characters. I found Dr. Khan and Greaves especially interesting, as while the others kind of fell into their own tropes, they both had well drawn motivations and backstories, especially Greaves. It's not every day you have an Autistic protagonist in a book, and I feel that Carey did a good job of research so that he could create a realistic and sensitive portrayal of a person on the spectrum. I also enjoyed that Carey goes more into the premise from the first book, in that perhaps evolution doesn't end with us, and that we may not go extinct during a catastrophic event, but would instead adapt accordingly.

Do you need to read THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS to read THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE? I'd say no, but with a caveat: You will probably enjoy it more if you did, given some of the easter eggs and certain things that go down in the epilogue. It wouldn't be necessary, but I think it would enrich this story a bit. I enjoyed THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE, and I think that even if you didn't really care for THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS you could find a lot to like in this one.

Ahoy there me mateys! I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So here be me honest musings . . .

the boy on the bridge (M. R. Carey)

Title: the boy on the bridge

Author: M. R. Carey

Publisher: Orbit Books

Publication Date: May 2, 2017 (hardcover/e-book)

ISBN: 9780316300339

Source: NetGalley

I found this book to be even more compelling than me last read by Mr. Carey. This yarn be what I call a companion novel to, the girl with all the gifts. In me mind, it be a sequel but certainly can stand on its own.

This was a roller-coaster of a ride. This novel also takes place in Britain during the end of days but follows a different group than the previous book - a scientific exploration team. A mixed group of scientists and military personal are riding in an armored tank named Rosie. Humanity is dying out and the group is out to collect samples that have been left in the field to hopefully find the clue to survival. Of course, nothing goes as planned . . .

This team consists of twelve people. One of the best things about both novels are the fascinating characters. In particular, I fell in love with both Rina and Stephen. Stephen is a young brilliant scientist who everyone dismisses as a useless child because of his age and autism. Rina is his friend and fellow scientist who is one of the only folks to recognize his potential. Like the relationship of Melanie and Ms. Justineau in the previous novel, the thoughts and feelings of Stephen and Rina drive much of the enjoyment.

Though there is plenty of other enjoyment to be had. Whether it involves the breakdown of interpersonal relationships, politics, or dealing with ambushing hungries, I didn't want to put this one down. I suggest ye pick up either of the two novels and fall in love with Mr. Carey's stories and characters. I will certainly be reading more of his work, starting with fellside.

Check out these other reviews from me crew:

read the girl with all the gifts first - kate @ for winter's nights

didn't read the girl with all the gifts first - drew @ the tattooed book geek

Side note: Any one seen the film of the first novel?

So lastly . . .

Thank ye Orbit Books!

Goodreads has this to say about the novel:

Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy.

The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world.

To where the monsters lived.

To visit the author’s website go to:

M. R. Carey - Author

To buy the novel go to:

the boy on the bridge - Book

To add to Goodreads go to:

Yer Ports for Plunder List

Okay, first this book warrants some clarification to avoid disappointing masses of future readers. The Boy on the Bridge is neither a prequel nor a sequel to The Girl with All the Gifts. While The Boy on the Bridge deals with the same subject matter (i.e. zombies versus scientists!), one does not need to read The Girl with All the Gifts in order to understand this newest novel (or vice versa).

Keeping that disclaimer in mind, I will say I was disappointed with M.R. Carey’s newest novel. I went into it expecting some sort of connection with The Girl with All the Gifts and like many others have stated in their reviews, I became a bit panicked thinking that I had forgotten about characters when really, this book is a complete stand alone novel and has nothing to do with the plot or characters in The Girl with All the Gifts.

The Boy on the Bridge moves MUCH more slowly than its predecessor and I found it hard to continue reading at times since I felt like the plot came to a stand still towards the middle of the book. While I don’t always need nor anticipate a lot of action in my novels, I do expect a bit more from a story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic Britain overrun by hungries and no known cure. While things started to pick up for the second half, I was a bit let down by the awkward pacing of the storyline as a whole and the ending only slightly made up for my earlier frustrations.

While the characters in the novel do slowly begin to show their individual personalities in the second half of the book, I never felt fully connected to any of them. The book begins with Dr. Khan, but awkwardly transitions into narrations by Stephen Greaves, a teenaged boy who exhibits clear signs of severe autism. I found myself confused by this switch and it never felt like Dr. Khan’s character fully developed after that. The other cast of characters were more one-dimensional and I had a hard time initially figuring out one person from another. While the reader does slowly come to learn a bit more about individuals and their back stories and personalities, no one ever felt as fully developed and well-rounded as the characters in The Girl with All the Gifts.

I do think this book could have potentially been more enjoyable if I hadn’t read The Girl with All the Gifts prior and if I also hadn’t begun my reading thinking the two novels were connected in any way. While the second half did make up a bit for the messiness of the first part of the story, I’m still feeling conflicted about the book as a whole. I’d definitely recommend The Girl with All the Gifts over The Boy on the Bridge for those looking for a “smarter” zombie storyline, but perhaps my judgement is just overshadowed by the order in which I read these two.

Thank you, Netgalley and Orbit for allowing me the opportunity to read The Boy on the Bridge before its publication date in exchange for an honest review!

When I heard that M.R. Carey was writing another novel in the same world he created for The Girl With All the Gifts, I was quite thrilled: post-apocalyptic scenarios are always fascinating, and this author had already delivered a compelling, chillingly believable one on the premise of an infection by the parasitic fungus Cordyceps, that turned affected humans into a sort of zombies, or "hungries".

This new novel is set a few years before the events of its predecessor, and shows the changed world in wider details, although it shares the same enclosed, claustrophobic feeling of its companion story: here a mixed crew of military and scientists travels across devastated Britain on board an armored vehicle, the Rosalind Franklin (or "Rosie"), following the tracks of a previous expedition that never made it back to the relatively safe haven of Beacon. Rosie's crew is tasked with the retrieval of the tissue cultures left by their unfortunate colleagues, in the hope of gleaning some information that might lead to a cure for the Cordyceps plague.

The difficult interaction between the science team and the soldiers escorting them is not helped by the cramped conditions aboard Rosie, a mix between a tank and a mobile lab, while the lack of any appreciable results in the search sets a pall of hopelessness over the general mood. The divide between the two groups is further stressed by the different personalities of their respective leaders, forced to share command of the expedition: colonel Carlisle is a tainted hero of the Breakdown, the time when the plague effectively ended civilization, and he's weighted down by the memories of what he had to do under orders; while doctor Fournier is a mix between scientist and bureaucrat, more the latter than the former in truth, and a man with scarce-to-absent people skills.

Further friction comes from the presence of the youngest member of the team, teenaged Stephen Greaves: he's an orphan possessed of a brilliant, if disturbed, mind - despite his young age he's the inventor of the blocking gel that hides humans' scent from the keen sense of smell of the hungries, but his introvert, almost autistic behavior had the crew nicknaming him "the Robot". The only person truly close to him, and the one who insisted on his presence for the expedition, is doctor Samrina Kahn, who has somehow adopted Stephen and managed to establish with him a relationship based on mutual trust. Kahn, however, is now plagued by a problem that might prove damaging for the mission and everyone's safety: she discovered she's pregnant…

Where The Girl With All the Gifts dealt with the interaction between the uninfected humans and a group of second-generation contaminated children still in possession of their mental faculties, here the focus is solely on humans; and if the first novel was set in a time in which the Breakdown was already one generation removed, here it's still a fresh, painful memory: people still remember vividly the life they led before, and this adds to their behavior a poignancy that was almost absent in the people managing the base where Melanie and her companions were being studied. The world that was is dramatically present in the awareness of these survivors, allowing the readers to see more about its collapse and the birth of the new, fragile attempt at a new society that is still in the throes of its birth.

It would be legitimate to believe, or hope, that in the face of such a tragedy the remnants of humanity would regroup and form a more cohesive community, but that's indeed wishful thinking, as the coalitions aboard Rosie - and the political maneuvering in Beacon - show with tragic clarity: even in the face of mass extinction individuals look for more power, or the assertion of their worth; for supreme leadership or the meaningless praise of academia. The end of this world might be hastened by the Cordyceps infection, but its people can inflict just as much harm as the hordes of hungries roaming the land.

As with the first novel, hope seems to reside with younger people: here much rests on the shoulders of Stephen Greaves, a teenager whose brilliance is offset by enormous difficulties in interacting with others, either physically or verbally - and the brief flashes about his past leave us wondering weather his condition was congenital or the result of the horrifying event that orphaned him. That same removal, however, is coupled with great powers of observation that enable him to somehow figure out his traveling companions and to adopt behavioral patterns that allow him to coexist with them in the stifling confines of Rosie. Stephen ultimately becomes the interface between the humans and the new breed of children born after the plague's spread, feral creatures that are nonetheless able to create societal rules and to work together - he does not truly belong with either group, and therefore is the one who can attempt to bridge the gap: I've wondered more than once if this was the real meaning of the book's title, rather than the one offered by the circumstances of Stephen's rescue…

Although Stephen figures prominently in the story, the overall mood of the novel is choral, as the various events are observed through the eyes of several of Rosie's crew, and this multi-faceted observation helps move the story along especially in the first part of the book, where the going looks a little slow and not much seems to happen: the characters come across in sharp definition and the frictions that move through Rosie like unstable currents make this novel just as much a study of human psychology as a post-apocalyptic drama. Once events start rolling, though, they move at a steady, unrelenting pace toward the final showdown, one that kept me on the edge of the proverbial seat because I was aware of the multiplicity of scenarios that could come into being: what really happens in the end is filled with such moving intensity that I could not help being affected by it, and I realized it was an even more powerful ending than the one of The Girl With All the Gifts.

And as if that were not enough, there is an even more compelling epilogue where the past represented by this story meets the "present" of Melanie's story and segues into the future, tying all the narrative threads into an amazing, awe-inspiring finale. Should Mr. Carey choose to return to this world for more stories, I will be more than delighted to read them…

**4 and 1/2 stars**