The Boy on the Bridge

by M. R. Carey

392 pages

English language

Published Oct. 19, 2017

ISBN:: 978-0-316-30033-9
OCLC Number:: 981557754

(22 reviews)

"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."--Dust jacket.

1 edition

settingshadow reviewed The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts, #2)

Review of 'The Boy on the Bridge' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

[b:The Girl With All the Gifts|17235026|The Girl With All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts #1)|M.R. Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403033579s/17235026.jpg|23753235] was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of book: smart science, interesting existential quandaries. The Boy on the Bridge is the Girl With All the Gifts redux. But unfortunately, literally: the smart but loving female scientist, and the precocious but different kid and they travel with a small crew who are deadset against them, all together exploring a land laid waste by the zombie plague. Unfortunately with all of the clever twists done already in The Girl, there wasn't much new and I felt like The Boy largely dragged.

That's not to say there weren't well-drawn characters and emotional beats -- there were, but it really hit basically all the same emotional, plot and character notes as The Girl did.

Pentapod reviewed The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts, #2)

Review of 'The boy on the bridge' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is the prequel to "The Girl With All The Gifts" but was written second and should definitely be read second. Although it mostly deals with the events before TGWATG leading up to the abandonment of the research tank "Rosalind Franklin", the ending is set several decades in the future and ties up BOTH books with a conclusion that would be a bit spoilery, or at best somewhat meaningless, if you haven't read TGWATG first.

That said, Carey has managed to create another great book in a post-zombie-apocalyptic Britain and I liked this as much as the first, although the middle sequences of both are definitely quite similar (soldiers & scientists arguing and politicking in travelling tank). There are interesting new characters, the main ones being Stephen Greaves, a brilliant boy on the autistic spectrum who is the inventor of e-blocker, and Samrina Khan, a researcher and adoptive mother of Stephen who finds herself pregnant while on a research expedition surrounded by zombies. I'd have liked to see more of Colonel Carlysle, the military head of the expedition and the man who was in charge of the devastating and futile firebombing attempts to stop the spread of the zombie plague.

Anyway, if you enjoyed the first you'll enjoy this one as it fills in many of the missing details from the first and ties the story up in a satisfying ending.