THE FOREST of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is a wee bit of fiction with a touch of horror and pathos, wrapped in a popular genre.
Warning: There is a major spoiler on the way.
Basically Ryan's book is a zombie story. Yep, another one. What with the Living Dead, I Am Legend, Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days and all the other zombie movies of the last couple of years, you'd think that just about everything that can be written or filmed about zombies, had been done.
But no, here's another version of the popular genre.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth is set sometime in the future – Mary and her family live in a small village surrounded by high, wire fences; not to keep them in, but to keep the 'Unconsecrated' out.
Their world has devolved to a kind of pre-industrial level, with little knowledge of the time that went before, apart from stories and some trinkets passed down from generation to generation.
Mary, for whatever reason, doesn't feel comfortable. As a child her mother whispered stories about the 'Sea', a huge body of water that has come to represent freedom in Mary's imagination.
Despite her dislocation from society though, Mary is about to get married. It's what everyone does; they must continue to breed or the Unconsecrated will multiply and humans will cease to exist.
But something is about to change. The Sisters who run the village – a religious order that blames development and 'meddling with God's work' for the source of the Unconsecrated – are worried.
There are too many Unconsecrated and not enough humans; something has to give.
What makes The Forest of Hands and Teeth a cut above the usual zombie story, is the vaguely archaic feel to Ryan's text. Her prose is oddly old fashioned and quite descriptive.
Although Mary is meant to be the central character, she's not entirely sympathetic. She is often quite selfish and somewhat self-absorbed. Right to the end she drags others with her on her dangerous search for 'something more'.
While, truly there is nothing really of joy in Mary's village – especially after she falls in love with the wrong person – her need to escape is tinged with self-indulgence.
Ryan's book is an interesting look at what has become a traditional genre; zombies as a metaphor for the dangers of scientific experiments and the hubris of humans attempting to manipulate nature.
However, while the micro-analysis of a single character's motivation is interesting in a literary way, it doesn't make The Forest of Hands and Teeth a gripping read.
Rather, the points of real interest – the source of the zombies, their makers, the rest of the world – are lost under the layers of personal angst and 'coming of age' romance.
Still, this is a different type of zombie story; one that will interest readers who wouldn't normally pick up this genre and for that alone, The Forest of Hands and Teeth is worth a read.
The Forest of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan is published by Gollancz and is available from good bookstores and online.