The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey
This is a good but bleak and desolate post-apoc novel. Melanie is a child yet she kept in her cell except when she collected by the armed guards for class. Sergeant Parks is scared of her, the teacher Miss Justineau is absolutely moronic and scientist Dr Caldwell is studying Melanie and her ilk to find a cure. Because Melanie is a monster, a terrifying monster that can think and plot. People unwisely forget that. This was creepy and the wrongness of what the world has become shocks.
Best Lines:
“There was nothing on the plates except for indeterminate smears from food that had rotted away a long, long time ago. So that now even the rot was gone.”
“A night that she knows contains so many terrible things.”
“No immunity, no vaccine, no conceivable cure.”
“Only hungries can thrive here.”
~
Known Devil by Justin Gustainis
The 3rd in the ‘Occult Crimes Unit Investigation’ isn’t as good as ‘Hard Spell’ and ‘Evil Dark’. A vampire gang war rages, a conniving politician connives and an old enemy lurks. Also Markowski swears, does repetitive stuff and bores. If there is a 4th volume in the series, I will read it but sadly this entry was a boring disappointment.
Best Lines:
“Quentin Tarantino’s got a lot to answer for.”
“Nobody probably consists of him and three other losers like him.”
“The very worst suffering is reserved for wizards, those who had the effrontery to impose their own will on the denizens of Hell. They all die in time, of course - and when they do, we are very eager to make them welcome.”
“The way he said that made me decide right there to start attending church more often.”
“He’ll kill himself - I’d bet on it.”
“Will he? Knowing what’s waiting for him on the other side?”
“Will prolong his life of misery as long as he possibly can - to postpone the eternal lessons in real misery that he will experience at the hands of my brethren in Hades.”