The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey

The girl in this grisly story is a member of the "hungries," zombies who are driven to feed on human flesh.  Melanie is different, however.  Like the others, she is drawn to humans by their scent and is gripped with an almost uncontrollable urge to attack.  However, Melanie, though just a child, understands who she is and has desires and values that go beyond her baser instincts.   The plot revolves around a small group of survivors fleeing from an attack by another band of killers, the junkers.  Two soldiers, a "mad scientist" who wants to cut up Melanie's brain, Melanie, and a beloved teacher are struggling to work their way across lawless and dangerous terrain to reach a place of refuge.  The tension is unrelenting and the consequences for being discovered are beyond nightmarish.  I couldn't put it down.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart is a a wild ride for a small group of insurgents fighting against the rule of cruel and violent Epics—humans who possess extraordinary powers such as flight, superhuman strength, and seeming invincibility.   Eighteen-year-old David watched as  Steelheart, an Epic who is immensely powerful, turns non-living things into steel and is impervious to guns, knives and fire, killed his father.  David has studied the Epics for 10 years and wants to join the Reckoners, who specialize in assassinating Epics, so together they can discover Steelheart’s weakness and destroy him.

Cover Art by Mike Bryan

The action takes place in a dystopian world, Newcago—formerly known as Chicago, shrouded in perpetual darkness thanks to the alliance between high Epics Steelheart and Nightwielder.  Some humans who are needed to run the basic functions of a government such as enforcement, providing power, and running the economy,  live above ground;  others less important or more of a threat survive in the tunnels underneath the city.  David comes from this underworld, having worked in a munitions factory throughout his childhood.  He carries with him his rifle, his knowledge of Epics and of Reckoners, and a deep desire for revenge.  When he becomes involved in an assassination attempt on the Epic Fortuity, the rebels take him prisoner.  He has to prove himself and sell the group on his plans to take on Steelheart.  Meanwhile, he also has to deal with a growing attraction to Megan, one of the members of the Reckoners.  (Note:  the dialog between these two is particularly clever.)

Gunfights, racing motorcycles, bolts of destructive forces from the hands of Epics make up the frequent action.  State of the art munitions are employed, along with an ongoing debate on the merits of rifles versus handguns.  Secondary characters are given enough personality and special talents to make them interesting.  The leader, Prof, is particularly mysterious.  How much power does he have and why is he reluctant to use it?  Personally, I liked the internal debate on whether the devil one knows (Steelheart) is actually preferable to whatever or whoever would replace him if the Reckoners succeed.  There are worse places to live than Newcago.  

Steelheart is a great combination of action, suspense, plot twists and a touch of romance. Great fun.

The Age of Miracles

In The Age of Miracles, author Karen Thompson Walker takes on the logic problem that "If the sun has come up every day in known history until today, will it  rise tomorrow" and adds a twist.  The sun does continue to come up everyday, but now the days are getting longer as the earth's rotation slows.  What does this mean? What happens when a day/night cycle becomes so distorted that days and nights last 40 hours each?  Do people follow an artificial clock to maintain a 24-hour schedule or do they try to follow the circadian cycle of night and day no matter how long a day is?  How can these two very different choices affect society as a whole?  The narrator, a California teenager named Julia, who lives with her parents and two cats,  observes how life is changing, both for her personally and for her family and beyond. Responses to the official government announcement vary from panic and flight to resignation and calculation.  Within her own household there are extremes.  Julia's mother starts hoarding food while her father continues to go to work--or so she thinks.  Clearly there are tensions in her parents' marriage that are exacerbated by the crisis.  Julia also loses her best friend, when Hanna's Mormon family travels to Utah for the end of the world and leaves Julia to suffer  the cruelty often visited upon loners.  The novel juxtaposes the personal challenges that Julia faces as her parents fight and her grandfather disappears with the increasingly disrupted society forced into an artificial schedule that breaks down people mentally and physically.  She wants to find love and live the life of a normal teen, but cannot ignore the threats to her very existence, as plants and birds die and radiation from the sun becomes increasingly lethal.  Author Walker has written a thoughtful novel with an interesting premise. The narrative is full of descriptions of physical changes to the environment and humans, including  how strange it is to be awake and going to school in total darkness and then trying to sleep in full daylight.  Julia is a sympathetic character and one can't help but admire her resilience and faith that somehow mankind and science will find an answer. Recommended.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

This was a great book for a three-day weekend (400+ pages). Incarceron refers to prison-world, created as a perfect society to isolate and at the same time care for felons and others deemed dangerous to the Outside. But the society has devolved into a grim, violent tyranny, where technology is now used to repress and spy on the subservient population and deceit, murder and thievery are necessary to survive. Prisoner oath-brothers Finn and Keiro, along with the former slave Attia and the Sapient Gildas, join forces in a quest to escape from Incarceron, using Finn's visions, belief in a better world, and the possession of a magic key.

On the Outside, there is a matching key, which enables its owner to communicate with those inside the prison. Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, discovers it when she sneaks into her father's private study. Claudia and and her tutor Jared (another Sapient) struggle to solve its mysteries and to save the prisoners. At the same time they must also contend with her father's ambitious marriage plans for her and with the politics and plotting that govern life in the Outside.

The story lines weave together, as Finn and Claudia realize they depend on each other for their freedom. The futuristic world is creepy and cautionary, with questions about life, loyalty and human frailty.