Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - The Girl With All the Gifts

This was even better than I expected! Such a well written, compelling story. I went in pretty much blind and I definitely recommend reading it that way, the suspense and unraveling of information is great. I listened to this on audiobook that had some soundtrack music and sound effects, which was also expertly done. The narrator was perfect, and the added music and sounds were subtle and added tension and atmosphere. I would have given it 5 stars if it weren't for

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The army guy's having unpleasant fixations on sexualizing women. I really hated reading those parts, they added nothing to the plot and made the characters voicing them seem excessively stupid.

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prufrockpreptooth's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

OK, bah, j'ai pas pu le lâcher une fois la seconde moitié arrivée, globalement 😅 J'ai tout dévoré : l'aventure est prenante, les relations entre les personnages bien développées et intéressantes, et surtout, surtout, tout un côté scientifique qui essaye vraiment de rendre tout ça crédible - et même si on est jamais à 100%, j'adore les histoires qui essayent d'être scientifiquement crédibles, alors forcément, j'ai adoré.

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Et presque, Caldwell a fini par être le personnage qui j'ai préféré (et aussi, détesté, faut pas se leurrer) le plus !

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ghostlyprince's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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shieldbearer's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

An extremely strong showing from Mike Carey, who I know from his work on X-Men. The characterizations were very well done for the most part- most of them are quite layered. The worldbuilding was strong, and the reviewers asking questions about motivations and "evolution" clearly didn't pay attention because those things were explained in the text.

Ultimately, a few small things did knock this book down by a star for me. For one, I would have

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at least switched the fates of Parks and Gallagher, though I also think you could make an argument for Gallagher's survival being more interesting than his death given the detailed backstory and internal conflict he's given. His interaction with the status quo at the end of the story would have been extremely interesting IMO

Part of this may be because I didn't particularly care for Parks, but this is also because Parks doesn't really have anything interesting going on.

For another, I feel as though

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the Hungry children were too easy to corral at the end.

The questions of the long-term viability of Melanie's plan didn't bother me because that's not the point of the story.

Finally, and most glaring IMO,

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I feel like Sparks would have encoutnered pregnant hungries if they are able to sexually reproduce. I just have a hard time believing this aspect without a little extra narrative support - especially given how often fatal pregnancy is, and how the fungus wrecks so much of the body and shuts down a lot of its systems. Even mentioning a pregnant hungry in the crowd would have helped. I also can't say I'm a fan of the whole "sex is a human instinct" theme. I expected there to be adult hungries like Melanie that showed up later, if they specified that only the kids were the unique ones earlier I somehow missed it.

Either way, I definitely recommend this even if I feel some elements could have been treated with a bit more care- which is about what I would say about his work on the X-Men, as well.

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