I enjoyed this just as much as The Girl With All The Gifts - great writing, a convincing story and a diverse cast of characters. I must confess though that I can't see how this works as a prequel to the GWATG story, or perhaps I've just forgotten. Anyhow, both these both work well as standalone reads. The end-of-the-world scenario is quite convincing, particularly as it's set in the UK so has a bit more resonance for me at least!
Thanks to the publisher for a digital review copy.

Wow, Carey has done it again.

The Girl with all the Gifts turned out to be an unexpectedly brilliant read and while I had high hopes for sequel/prequel The Boy on the Bridge I will confess I also had some doubts. Did we really need another book, could it ever be as good? The answers to both of those questions is a very definite YES!!!

This has all of the elements that made The Girl with all the Gifts so wonderful (and is fairly similar in terms of plot) but, if like me the first book left you with a lot of questions, this is the story with the answers... well some of them.

It's very much a character driven story as it follows a team of scientists and their military escort as they set out on an expedition in an armored lab on wheels (with a very familiar name) to try and find something that will help them fight the infection that has destroyed the world. This is a long trip with not a lot of personal space for the crew so as you may expect tensions rise. Add to that the split between the civilian scientists and the military, different beliefs and a mixture of personalities and there is almost more conflict amongst themselves than with the hungries.

The story is told from the point of view of the various members of the team giving different perspectives on the same events but also giving a real insight into the reasons for their actions. In the beginning I did struggle to remember who was who (my feeble brain struggles with lots of names even with the handily provided list) but I soon came to recognize each of the individual voices.

Some characters and personalities do feel a little familiar but the youngest member of the team Stephen Greaves is truly unique and absolutely fascinating to read. His brain doesn't work the way everyone else's does making him a bit of an outcast from the others and the one who's either going to save everyone or get them all killed. He could be a genius or he could just be a very troubled and traumatized child and he's ostracized by almost all of the crew who view him as the latter.

Unsurprisingly given the mission of the team and the number of scientists there is a lot more science in this story. It's incredibly detailed and well thought out, explaining how the infection began and it's effects on the host but I have to confess it became a little too heavy for me at times and lost me. It is interesting to learn more about the hungries and their behavior, and I'm sure those more knowledgeable about biology and chemistry will find it fascinating, but it was a little too much for me and I may have skimmed a little.

Even with this focus on the science and the characters, there is enough action to keep the story moving forward and the reader on their toes. There are moments of extreme violence (some which made me squirm), they're generally sudden, unexpected and over quickly but have a lot of impact. There are all of the best zombie story tropes and it raises those intriguing ethical dilemmas around sacrificing for the greater good and following orders which will leave you pondering whether the characters actions are right or wrong and just what you would do in that situation.

I wouldn't necessarily say it was a fast paced story, it's a little slow in places but there is a gradual build in tension throughout and the ending when it comes is absolutely jaw dropping. Those characters who I wasn't too fussed about had somehow snuck their way in and I was truly invested in what happened to them and without spoilers, it was horrifying, heartbreaking and absolutely wonderful. And, I kinda want more....

Overall, this is an incredibly well written and intelligent story with a focus very much on the characters. It's a little heavier on the science than I would like but the ending more than makes up for any quibbles I may have had along the way. If you read and enjoyed The Girl with all the Gifts I'd really recommend you read this.

Although this is marketed as a prequel to "The Girl with all the Gifts", I read this as a stand alone book. I didn't go back & re-read or even read a snopsis of the other book. This worked well for me and I was able to read it with no comparisons.
This is essentially a post-apocalyptic zombie thriller. There are thousands out there in some form or other. This rated as slightly better than average so I felt warranted the four stars.
The apocalypse has happened with the spread of a fungus which turns people into "Hungries" - zombies. They are essentially dead & stand in a dormant state until they smell live food. A crew of 12 people (6 military & 6 scientists) head off on the Rosalind Franklin (a strange converted & very large tank) to assess what is left of the UK following a previous mission which never returned.
The book contains a selection of well described & defined characters though some of the lesser members of the group did merge a bit. Samrina Khan is the most prominent scientist who is the sort of guardian for 16 year old Stephen Greaves. Greaves is a hyper intelligent autstic savant and much is made of his inability to touch, communicate or tell lies. Sometimes too much. The main scientist is a weak and ineffectual man. The Colonel heads the military and he has a past. McQueen is a Lieutenant who resents this authority & tensions are rife.
I did enjoy this book and the plot was well written if not totally original. It is a common theme in many books of this type that a group head off to seek something be it a cure, another settlement, medication or similar. The bulk of those books is therefore about the interaction with the zombies. In this book, however, the main interaction is between the crew members. The hungries are quite a side issue really. It isn't until a long way into the journey that the alternative hungry children are discovered.
I wasn't totally happy with the ending of this book. The epilogue takes place 20 years after the main event. However the evolution of the hungry children in that time is way too fast. It just didn't quite make sense. I feel the epilogue was added in this way to form a link with "The Girl with all the Gifts". Personally I'd rather it hadn't been added. I could have lived with the ending as it was.
On the whole this is quite a good book of this genre. To be fair the science fiction genre is currently awash with this type of book and I am starting to look for something more. This book didn't provide the something more but it was a good read.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

I think I agree with the general consensus - this isn't quite as good as The Girl with all the Gifts. However this is amazingly compelling, especially since you already know how it's going to end if you've read the other book. I still really enjoyed it and love this author's work.

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a fungus has turned most of the population into "hungries". A team of scientists and soldiers has been sent out to collect samples for study. This is their story, and is told from the viewpoints of a few different characters. Each one has their own agenda, and some even have secrets which could cost the crew their lives...

I would definitely recommend reading "The Girl With All The Gifts" before reading this, if you haven't already done so. Not only is it a great book, it gives you vital information which just makes "The Boy On The Bridge" even more enjoyable. The second book is somewhat of a prequel, although it isn't vital to read both and I would say this book stands strong in its own right. You just won't get all the subtle links to the first book which enhanced the whole experience for me.

With continuous arcs in the storyline, I was absolutely hooked and taken by surprise again and again. The story starts off quite slowly, and you initially think the book is going to be about one thing - then another, and another. However, these "side plots" as I will call them don't detract from each other at all, but actually come together to make one very exciting and unpredictable novel. The tension continues to build throughout, rising to an explosive and completely satisfying ending. And the epilogue - just wow. A thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable read, far exceeding my expectations and blowing "The Girl With All The Gifts" out of the water. Loved it. Very highly recommended!

I began this book with a little nervousness. The prequel aspect was intriguing but I had loved The Girl With All The Gifts so much I did not want to taint the memory of discovering Melanie and watching her story unfold.

This book is much the same again but yet so different, a plucky band of scientists and military protectors are sent to gather research evidence from pods dotted about the British Isles in a seemingly vain attempt to find a way to cure the Cordyceps fungal infection that has decimated the population.

Here the central battles are less physical, but a between duty, honour and maintaining humanity in the face of what seems a lost cause.

Genius Savant Teenager Greaves, An autistic youth with an eidetic memory and superlative analytical skills provides the emotional centre with another kindly woman acting as his moral compass and object of innocent affection, much like Melanie’s narrative herself .

Each have an ally in each other as government and Millitary machinations roil around them like ever more ominous rain clouds about to release a catastrophic deluge. The individual grudges, self servicing and personal preservation of some of the characters paints them as the real beings to fear.

Here as in the first book, the Feral Children pose the highest risk to life and limb. Their particular existence is scarier than any zombie Horde. The best and worst hope for humanity packed into tiny bodies with lethal ferocity.

It was nice to see the origins of Rosie, almost a character in herself, sanctuary and battle-bus and the saviour of the day in The Girl, and pretty heroic in this story too. She alway puts me in mind of the Thunderchild in HG Wells The War Of The Worlds.

Greaves takes a moral stand for all living creatures, finding empathy for the monstrous and revealing that the theory of “victim” in any situation is as fluid as the life’s blood that all survival hangs on.

The Epilogue here is a work of utter genius and a reward that makes all the angst and moral vacillation throughout the rest of the book totally worthwhile. For that alone I suggest you read this accomplished prequel after The Girl With All The Gifts for a fully rounded and satisfying reading experience.

The Boy on the Bridge is a prequel to The Girl with all the Gifts, following the story of the research crew on board the Rosalind Franklin, an armoured truck sent out to the wastelands of the Hungry-plague ridden world to collect samples and find a resistance or cure to the upcoming extinction of the human race. Tensions run high as the mixture of 12 soldiers and scientists are enclosed in a small space as the apocalypse rages around them – can they fulfill their mission?

It has been a while since I read The Girl with all the Gifts but I thought it was a great book and was really excited to get an ARC of this one. I must admit I did a quick plot synopsis refresh of The Girl on Wikipedia and I’m really glad I did so as The Boy on the Bridge is very much the second book in the series, even though it’s a prequel. Up until it’s epilogue I thought it might work as a stand-alone story, albeit one with a little less information about the Hungry Plague itself and without the added tension of knowing the fate of those onboard Rosie already. The epilogue I thought was particularly odd as not only did it stop the book from becoming a stand-alone, it also seemed to tie up loose ends and stop the need for another book in the series – before reading it I was excited for the next one, possibly set in Beacon. I’m not quite sure where the author will go next or if there will be another book after this one.

The plot is well written with a good mix of slow-moving tension inside Rosie and big dramatic scenes outside. The hungry are well portrayed and as the first one, there are some truly chilling moments. One of the problems is that there is quite a broad range of characters caught in a small space which is great in terms of plot and building tension but it’s quite hard as a reader to keep them all in your head and remember who is who. The young autistic boy, Stephen Greaves and scientist Samrina Khan are well-developed and interesting characters but a lot of the others fade into the background. Soldiers McQueen and Carlisle are both supposed to be main characters and enemies but in truth I found their characters to be very similar, and I got them mixed up a lot.

As a reader I found myself racing through this book in parts and also screaming (in my head, honest) at certain characters to just stop keeping secrets and tell other crew members important information that they needed to know. However, this never felt out of character or for no reason other than advance the plot; you understood their motivations and reasons behind keeping quiet even if you didn’t necessarily agree with them.

Overall I enjoyed The Boy on the Bridge just as much as Girl with all the Gifts - it’s a great take on the zombie-apocalypse genre and a tension filled, action packed read. I highly recommend it and thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for a chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved the girl with all the gifts and Fellside, so when I discovered another MR Carey book I was very excited.
The boy on the bridge did not disappoint me, set in the same dystopian world as the girl with all the gifts, yet so very cleverly written that it can be read as a stand-alone without the need to know the previous story.
I don’t want to give too much away as I feel it’s important to go into this story with as little knowledge as possible, but I will say don’t expect a continuation of Melanie’s story, this is a wonderfully, captivating story in its own right.

“A surprise return to the world of ‘The Girl with all the Gifts’”

In 2014 M R Carey (who also writes under Mike Carey) released ‘The Girl with all the Gifts’ which was a surprise word of mouth hit in both the horror world and beyond, a film followed last year. The 2014 novel was both a clever and original riff on the apocalyptic zombie story and I can’t say I ever expected a follow-up…… However, ‘The Boy on the Bridge’ isn’t really a sequel and the events take place round about the same time as the earlier novel. So you could easily read this novel without having read the other, but the problem is this new book is simply not in the same class as its predecessor.

One wonders whether Carey really fancied this book or whether publisher pushed for it? Whichever the answer is, it lacks the originality, freshness and pacing of the original. Equally important, it does not substantially develop the story that much. The premise is a re-tread: a group of scientists and military personal are looking for the cure to ‘Cordyceps’ (the zombie type infection which has destroyed humanity). They did this in the previous book by venturing into the ruined cities in a tank like scientific laboratory and they do the same sort of thing here, except this time they head to Scotland.

So the plot of ‘The Boy on the Bridge’ was deeply disappointing, it was also pretty pedestrian. It was far too easy to make comparisons to the earlier novel, with everything paling in comparison here. The group of scientists and military personal who head to Scotland looking for samples were a pretty dull bunch and I really didn’t care too much what happened to any of them. This just wasn’t the case in ‘The Girl with all the Gifts’ where the character’s sucked me in and their deaths meant something.

In this novel he zombie type creatures are known as ‘Hungries’ and they don’t especially have a huge role in this book. When they are not feeding they go into a dormant state where they stand stock-still until they smell or sense their next meal. Samrina Khan is the top scientist on the expedition, and probably the most interesting character, as she carries out experiments to find a cure. Eventually they discover on a new strand of ‘Hungry’ which seem to have retained certain humanistic characteristics. If you’ve read ‘The Girl with all the Gifts’ you’ll be familiar with these types of ‘hungry children’ and they featured in most of the better scenes in this novel.

The bottom line was that ‘The Boy on the Bridge’ lacked a powerful central character like ‘Melanie’ from the previous book. Melanie was a terrific character. A little girl who did not initially know she was a Hungry and helped the scientists survive. She was a one-in-a-million character and ‘The Boy on the Bridge’ really lacks her presence. Carey tries to compensate by giving us ‘Simon Greaves’ in this new book, a young man, who although he has no scientific training is a genius with science, but is also somewhere on the Autism spectrum. We find out it was he who created the blocker which disguises the smell of humans to the Hungries and he has been involved in other scientific advances. Like Melanie, he ventures out on his own, has a strong connection with Samrina Khan, however, ultimately as characters go he was pretty unengaging. And characters on the autistic spectrum have been done to death in recent years…..

If you’re a fan of ‘Girl with all the Gifts’ by all means give this a try, although Carey writes a beautiful and literary sentence a return to this world really deserved something better than this. Perhaps a straight sequel might have worked better? Having said that it does have a truly terrific epilogue which fans of the earlier book will love. So if you do start it, make sure you finish it.

Some books work best as standalone novels, maybe ‘The Girl with all the Gifts’ should have been one. Since that book came out in 2014 Carey then wrote a terrific ghost story called ‘Fellside’ which I also reviewed for GNoH and was brimming with good ideas and great writing so he certainly is not a one trick pony. So I hope for his next book he returns with something completely new.

Like most people, I finished The Girl With All The Gifts with the feeling that there was more to explore.  Now it seems that M.R. Carey has decided the same, with The Boy On The Bridge offering a side-long prequel (or 'sidequel' as the press release would have it) and a return to the world of the hungries.  Carey picks up the action with the crew of the Rosalind Franklin, the big armoured van which the characters in the original book found abandoned.  Knowing this, and given Melanie's actions at the end of the book, I settled down to the story with a certain amount of trepidation - did I really want to get attached to a set of characters who seemed quite so obviously doomed?  Still, while The Boy is more of a companion piece to The Girl rather than its equal, it does offer a sense of closure to the story - just maybe one for the completists.

The Rosalind Franklin research vessel was loaded up with the best scientific minds of Beacon (though not Caroline Caldwell much to her chagrin and more on that later) and sent out to face the hungries in the hopes of finding a cure.  With an even split between the science and military personnel, Carey has loaded himself up with a far bigger cast than in The Girl With All The Gifts.  Also unlike that novel, it is not instantly obvious who the protagonist is.  Samrina Khan is the first character we connect with, as she and a few of the soldiers loot an abandoned branch of Boots, but along with the commonplace medical supplies, Dr Khan is looking for something else and while her escort is distracted, she swipes a home pregnancy test.  Miles out of Beacon and in the midst of hostile territory, Dr Khan is knocked up.

From here, the narrative flashes forward seven months - seven months in a cramped battle bus, stuck with a mission for which few hold out any real hope.  The military leader is Colonel Carlisle, also known as The Fireman since he was carried out the fire raids over the Home Counties which some had foolishly hoped might stop the hungry plague but which most have since acknowledged did little more than slaughter innocent people.  Yet while Carlisle may have a dark history, he shows himself to be an honourable man who has a strong faith in the military set up and who was carrying out orders which he felt unable to disobey.  By contrast, the civilian commander is Dr Fournier, a devious little man who knows more than he is telling and who has beaten his rival Caroline Caldwell to this position by dodgy dealing.  Needless to say, these two men's warring approaches do not encourage smooth progress.

Yet beyond all this is Stephen Greaves, protegé of Dr Khan, probably autistic or else simply traumatised at having witnessed his parents being eaten by hungries whilst he was a small child.  Now aged fifteen, it is supposedly he who developed the e-blocker gel which allows the humans to walk past the hungries unnoticed.  His fellow crew members call him the Robot and only Dr Khan has any kind of faith in his abilities - he is only on the mission roster at her insistence.  Indeed, given how heartbroken Caroline Caldwell was in the previous book not to have been included, it seems odd that getting someone a place on the mission was so apparently easy.  He is however the Boy on the Bridge and while I never took to him as I did to Melanie, he was an interesting depiction of how a socially anxious person functioning on the autism spectrum might cope in such pressured circumstances.  Carey does always bring an imaginative perspective to the zombie story.

Stephen has a penchant for breaking loose of the confines of Rosie and going for walks to observe the local hungries.  It is on these travels he spots a strange girl with a scarred face - she moves like a hungry and is ignored by them almost as if she were one of them but she seems to observe and to reason more like a human.  The reader knows what is going on here straight away but we have to remember that this is taking place at least ten years before the events of The Girl With All The Gifts - the ever logical Stephen is left in a state of confusion and disarray.  What is going on here?  Should he tell the others?  Is the red-headed girl with the scarred face to be their friend or their foe?  The problem with Stephen is that he cannot explain what he thinks, only the facts that he knows.  So he remains silent.

There is always an issue about including wunderkind in a narrative and it is to Carey's credit that he has now managed to do so in two separate books and carried it off successfully.  Stephen could easily have been an irritating Wesley Crusher figure - the boy-genius-whizz-kid - but yet his communication difficulties mean that we can believe that he will not find it possible to approach any of his fellow crew members, even when it becomes agonisingly clear that he ought to.  Stephen is an interesting mirror to Girl's Melanie - he is her opposite in so many ways, quiet where she is talkative, distant where she was affectionate and dispassionately logical where she was drawn to mythological tales of nobility and heroism.  Yet both novels see both characters reach the identical conclusion about the fate of humanity.

As Rosie continues her lumbering patrol of the United Kingdom, we watch as the crew gradually come to realise the danger they are in.  While certain characters do have Cannon Fodder stamped on their foreheads in rather large letters - it's no spoiler to disclose that I am astonished that Penny lasted as long as she did - Carey does an excellent job in making the reader invest in their fate without ever giving us any reason to believe that they will survive.  The volatile and trigger-happy Lieutenant Daniel McQueen, Foss, the rodent-like Fournier and big-hearted Carlisle - their bickering and back-and-forth was often petty and the political engineering could seem ludicrous in the face of what they were actually up against but wasn't that Melanie and Stephen's point?

As before, I found the level of detail to be fantastic - during one of the observation trips, they notice that most of the hungries are wearing the same overalls and conclude that these were all workers at the local factory who had been infected while on shift.  The random objects which the child-hungries used as weapons or talismans were also fascinating, with the face-offs between them and Rosie's crew being magnificent set pieces.  I cannot really see The Boy getting its own film adaptation but Carey certainly writes with an eye for the visual.  Finty Williams' narration adds a resonance to the story - in high drama, she breathes tension, in low moments she sighs sorrow.  Williams captures Stephen's querulousness, Fournier's mixture of sycophancy and deceit and then the additional layers of tragedy to Khan.   And as she spoke the words of the finale, I felt tearful.

To be honest, Boy would have been a worthwhile read for me for that magnificent finale alone.  There is a definite feeling of the circle closing.  I am a little divided over whether Boy weakens some of the impact of Girl - when you finish a novel with someone (spoilers) wiping out humanity, returning to the fray feels risky.  Yet I did care about the characters, especially the Fireman, which implies that Carey's novel had achieved its purpose.  The final confrontation between Carlisle and Fournier felt like a conversation between good and evil and Boy continued to probe at the questions first posed by Girl - which values are worth clinging on to?  What is not worth sacrificing even if it means our survival?  Does humanity have a monopoly on honour?  What does it even mean to be human?  I can see how there might be more room for Carey to return here again but yet I find myself hoping that he will not, to let that last image of Rosie riding again be the one that takes us out.  No matter the depth to which Carey's novels take us, his ultimate message is always one of love.