Book Review: The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey

One-sentence summary:
The Boy on the Bridge takes us back into the wonderful world of the hungries (zombies) we entered with The Girl with All the Gifts.

We get to see the monsters. And by monsters, I’m referring to both the zombies, referred to as “hungries,” and the humans who perform atrocities on them and each other.

In The Girl with All the Gifts, I tumbled into that world with fascination and wonder. In fact, the word “hungries” in this book elicited in me an almost Pavlovian response, so exciting it was to go back to that world.

The Boy on the Bridge isn’t quite as compelling. It’s a fun reentry into the world, but it doesn’t have the development and the exciting discovery of the original story.

But it’s still a world I’m happy to inhabit. While these characters weren’t quite as riveting as the original set, they were still an interesting crew to follow.

We get to see more of the origin of the hungries and what makes them the way they are. It’s a frustrating trend in zombie movies lately; we don’t know how the epidemic started or how the main characters managed to survive up to now. We’re just dropped into the middle of the dystopian world with no lead-up.

This book fortunately gives more of a glimpse of what came before.

I would love to come back to this world to an even earlier spot. I want to see the placid people living their placid lives, and then this niggling virus (or whatever causes it) breaks out, and the world goes crazy destructing itself almost faster than the virus itself does.

On the other side of that, I’d love a book that comes much much later. Without giving away what happens, it would be interesting to see the fully post-apocalyptic world; one in which the turmoil has finished and the new order has emerged and settles into their lives. I want to see what the new normal becomes.

We get a taste of that in both books. And it leaves me wanting even more. Let’s hope this isn’t Carey’s last foray into the world of the hungries.

I’ll admit my own zombie-like drive. Instead of wandering around in a semi-trance muttering, “braaaaaaains,” I’ll crack open Carey’s book and murmur “huuuuungries!”