![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Challenge #26: The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
(Yes, I'm going through these at a rapid pace. I've got a backlog to post.)
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
In Mary's village, all life is focused on two things: preserving a vestige of humanity within the fence, and keeping the Unconsecrated -- the vicious, shambling dead -- out. To that end, life is extremely restricted, and each villager knows his or her role well, and follows the instruction of the religious Sisters who rule the village.
Mary, though, dreams of something else -- something beyond the village. So she chafes at the restricted possibilities for her life, dreams of the ocean... and is fascinated when someone arrives from outside the village.
This book had a lot of promise, which is, I think, why the flaws made me pull my hair out. I could see how great the book could be, and so I winced all the more when parts of it fell flat. It really was a page-turning read, with a lot of intriguing ideas, and so the holes in it frustrated me.
First, the good things: the book was written beautifully. Ryan has a lush, lilting voice, and that meshes well with the wild dangers outside the fence and with Mary's dreamy, searching-for-the-horizon personality. It read so easily and so enjoyably that, even with its faults, I'd be happy to read the next book.
I also liked some of the things that were done with the worldbuilding. It was enjoyable to read a zombie book that was so quiet and personal, and one that was set so long after the unspecified disaster that caused the zombies to appear. (I think it's actually several generations after.) I liked the details of how the villagers worked to slowly increase their protected village, and I was intrigued by the Sisters and by the stranger who arrived at the village. The book definitely kept the pages turning.
The biggest problem was the characters, which is a big problem for me because characters are the number one most important thing in a book for me -- and a big problem because this is a very character-centric book. Mary (the first-person narrator and definitely the main character) was well-characterized enough, but not terribly unique: she was a young woman who felt stifled by the options available at the village and who wanted to see the world. Not bad, and a character motivation that I, in general, like and am sympathetic to, but a fairly recognizable type. That would have been okay if the other characters had been more fully-rounded, but they weren't. The book focused on a core of, let's see, seven characters (eight if you count the dog), and unfortunately each one of them is defined only by their relationship to Mary. One is Mary's best friend and envies her; two are boys who are varying degrees of in love with her; one is her brother, who resents her; one is her brother's wife and has really no traits at all besides being her brother's wife; and one is a kid. The only desires and motivations they express are either a) related to Mary, or b) "not getting eaten by zombies." I really wanted one of them to have a goal or a desire or a response to something or anything that didn't have anything to do with immediate short-term survival or Mary.
The second big problem is that the book gets me intrigued by a lot of mysteries and secrets and then... never really explains them, or explains them in ways that don't make much sense. But I can't get specific about that without spoiling, so, cut for discussion and some flailing.
First, Gabrielle, who really felt like a missed opportunity. Gabrielle was the person who came from beyond the fence, who Mary interacted with briefly, and I hoped she'd be a foil for Mary: someone else with goals and initiative, someone with a different perspective. And then... the Sisters turned her into a zombie! On purpose! A super-fast and super-dangerous zombie! For no apparent reason! I honestly couldn't tell you why. I could have bought a lot of different explanations—that they'd been trying to make her zombieproof and failed, that they were going to use her zombie status for a political purpose of some kind, even that they were batshit religious zealots and believed that the village deserved to die or something. But we got nothing. The Sisters turned someone, deliberately, into a superzombie, and then went, "Well, oops" when she caused the destruction of the entire village. I don't get it.
There were also a lot of not-really-explained thing. Why were the Sisters so insistent that girls had to marry or join the Sisterhood by a certain age? Marrying and having children was a Big Deal, since they were trying to breed enough people to save humanity and expand the village. Why would they remove the possibility for her to find a husband and produce some much-needed children when she was twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four? Okay, maybe they just didn't like her and wanted to keep an eye on her, but it was phrased as a more general rule than that. It just doesn't make sense to me.
I also wanted to know what religion the Sisters followed; it was curiously unspecified. The book mentions "scriptures" and a book, and I vaguely assumed it was some flavor of Christianity, but it would have been nice to get specifics, and that would have made the Sisters less Generic Bad Cloistered Women Who Hate Freedom. But mostly, I just wanted some idea of what the heck the Sisters were trying to do. If they were trying to destroy the village, I would have liked some evidence of that, so they didn't just look incompetent. If they weren't, what were they doing? What was the plan, the point? How was locking Gabrielle up and turning her into a zombie any help at all?
I keep coming back to that, I think because I really wanted Gabrielle to be something else: an equal to Mary, which otherwise the book just didn't have.
(Part of the problem is that I love a good love story, but... I didn't understand why either of the boys were so in love with Mary—it was presented as a fait accompli, and in fact Mary's friend is bitter because the boys have 'always' loved Mary best—and I have trouble believing in a real way that Mary loved either of them. She was clearly hot for Travis, and wanted someone to marry her so she wouldn't have to be a Sister, but she didn't love either of them. And that's fine, in fact it's admirable in a YA book to have a woman who has a larger goal than romance, but since so much of the focus of the book was the love triangle, it was a shame that it was kind of disappointing.)
Despite all my flailing, I'll still be reading the sequel, partly in hopes that some of the unexplained things will finally be explained, and that Mary will get a bigger goal. I'd still recommend this, especially if you like zombie stories and/or smooth, pretty prose, but it's not as highly recommended as some of the other things I've recced.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
In Mary's village, all life is focused on two things: preserving a vestige of humanity within the fence, and keeping the Unconsecrated -- the vicious, shambling dead -- out. To that end, life is extremely restricted, and each villager knows his or her role well, and follows the instruction of the religious Sisters who rule the village.
Mary, though, dreams of something else -- something beyond the village. So she chafes at the restricted possibilities for her life, dreams of the ocean... and is fascinated when someone arrives from outside the village.
This book had a lot of promise, which is, I think, why the flaws made me pull my hair out. I could see how great the book could be, and so I winced all the more when parts of it fell flat. It really was a page-turning read, with a lot of intriguing ideas, and so the holes in it frustrated me.
First, the good things: the book was written beautifully. Ryan has a lush, lilting voice, and that meshes well with the wild dangers outside the fence and with Mary's dreamy, searching-for-the-horizon personality. It read so easily and so enjoyably that, even with its faults, I'd be happy to read the next book.
I also liked some of the things that were done with the worldbuilding. It was enjoyable to read a zombie book that was so quiet and personal, and one that was set so long after the unspecified disaster that caused the zombies to appear. (I think it's actually several generations after.) I liked the details of how the villagers worked to slowly increase their protected village, and I was intrigued by the Sisters and by the stranger who arrived at the village. The book definitely kept the pages turning.
The biggest problem was the characters, which is a big problem for me because characters are the number one most important thing in a book for me -- and a big problem because this is a very character-centric book. Mary (the first-person narrator and definitely the main character) was well-characterized enough, but not terribly unique: she was a young woman who felt stifled by the options available at the village and who wanted to see the world. Not bad, and a character motivation that I, in general, like and am sympathetic to, but a fairly recognizable type. That would have been okay if the other characters had been more fully-rounded, but they weren't. The book focused on a core of, let's see, seven characters (eight if you count the dog), and unfortunately each one of them is defined only by their relationship to Mary. One is Mary's best friend and envies her; two are boys who are varying degrees of in love with her; one is her brother, who resents her; one is her brother's wife and has really no traits at all besides being her brother's wife; and one is a kid. The only desires and motivations they express are either a) related to Mary, or b) "not getting eaten by zombies." I really wanted one of them to have a goal or a desire or a response to something or anything that didn't have anything to do with immediate short-term survival or Mary.
The second big problem is that the book gets me intrigued by a lot of mysteries and secrets and then... never really explains them, or explains them in ways that don't make much sense. But I can't get specific about that without spoiling, so, cut for discussion and some flailing.
First, Gabrielle, who really felt like a missed opportunity. Gabrielle was the person who came from beyond the fence, who Mary interacted with briefly, and I hoped she'd be a foil for Mary: someone else with goals and initiative, someone with a different perspective. And then... the Sisters turned her into a zombie! On purpose! A super-fast and super-dangerous zombie! For no apparent reason! I honestly couldn't tell you why. I could have bought a lot of different explanations—that they'd been trying to make her zombieproof and failed, that they were going to use her zombie status for a political purpose of some kind, even that they were batshit religious zealots and believed that the village deserved to die or something. But we got nothing. The Sisters turned someone, deliberately, into a superzombie, and then went, "Well, oops" when she caused the destruction of the entire village. I don't get it.
There were also a lot of not-really-explained thing. Why were the Sisters so insistent that girls had to marry or join the Sisterhood by a certain age? Marrying and having children was a Big Deal, since they were trying to breed enough people to save humanity and expand the village. Why would they remove the possibility for her to find a husband and produce some much-needed children when she was twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four? Okay, maybe they just didn't like her and wanted to keep an eye on her, but it was phrased as a more general rule than that. It just doesn't make sense to me.
I also wanted to know what religion the Sisters followed; it was curiously unspecified. The book mentions "scriptures" and a book, and I vaguely assumed it was some flavor of Christianity, but it would have been nice to get specifics, and that would have made the Sisters less Generic Bad Cloistered Women Who Hate Freedom. But mostly, I just wanted some idea of what the heck the Sisters were trying to do. If they were trying to destroy the village, I would have liked some evidence of that, so they didn't just look incompetent. If they weren't, what were they doing? What was the plan, the point? How was locking Gabrielle up and turning her into a zombie any help at all?
I keep coming back to that, I think because I really wanted Gabrielle to be something else: an equal to Mary, which otherwise the book just didn't have.
(Part of the problem is that I love a good love story, but... I didn't understand why either of the boys were so in love with Mary—it was presented as a fait accompli, and in fact Mary's friend is bitter because the boys have 'always' loved Mary best—and I have trouble believing in a real way that Mary loved either of them. She was clearly hot for Travis, and wanted someone to marry her so she wouldn't have to be a Sister, but she didn't love either of them. And that's fine, in fact it's admirable in a YA book to have a woman who has a larger goal than romance, but since so much of the focus of the book was the love triangle, it was a shame that it was kind of disappointing.)
Despite all my flailing, I'll still be reading the sequel, partly in hopes that some of the unexplained things will finally be explained, and that Mary will get a bigger goal. I'd still recommend this, especially if you like zombie stories and/or smooth, pretty prose, but it's not as highly recommended as some of the other things I've recced.