BOOK REVIEW: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Title: The Forest of Hands and Teeth


Author: Carrie Ryan

Publisher: Gollancz

RRP: $9.99

ISBN: 9780575090866

Release Date: June 2010

Pages: 366



Description:

In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets and the Guardians and their power and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future-between the one she loves and the one who loves her.

And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Carrie Ryan is a graduate of Williams College and Duke Law School. THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH is her first novel. A former litigator, she now writes full-time. She lives with her writer/lawyer boyfriend and two fat cats in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Review:

Like Romero's zombies, Carrie Ryan's undead are both sad and scary. They lurch and shuffle, unable to do anything except fill their desire the flesh of the living. In many of the zombie novels it is often the living that seems to be the worse off, with the victims roaming the world without feeling or emotions.

This is a bleak tale about a bleak and unforgiving world. But it's seen through the eyes of a teenage girl, one who does not give up the hope she inherited from her mother in the form of stories about the ocean, a great place where water runs freely, as far as the eye can see. But all Mary knows is that she lives in a small village, surrounded by a forest filled with the Unconsecrated--zombies, if you will--beings that have no memory, no emotion, and no capacity for anything. They're nothing but mindless hands and teeth who want to feast on your flesh.

I really enjoyed this novel and can’t wait to read the rest in the series.