The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Author: Carrie Ryan
Genre: Young Adult, Zombie Fiction
Pages: 310 in the paperback edition.
How I found it: Podcast mention, don't remember which. Must start taking notes.

What it's about: Mary lives in a village where the only thing protecting them all from the the Forest of Hands and Teeth and the Unconsecrated who lurk there is the fences and the rules of the Sisterhood. But having grown up with stories of the world before the Return, Mary lives with the hope of seeing the ocean, and that maybe there is still a world beyond the Forest. When evidence that this might be true appears, she and a group of friends are forced to leave the village and search for the way out of the Forest.

What I thought of the book, spoiler-free:
Overall I enjoyed it, but nothing was particularly stand out about it. The world-building in the beginning was a little lax for me, in that I got a good feel of the Sisterhood and the Cathedral, but as for the village itself, I couldn’t really tell you what day-to-day life would be like for the average person. The Forest itself was pretty vivid in my head, but in terms of scenery, pretty repetitive. The other characters weren’t completely cardboard, but nor were they stand out and the love interest wasn’t fleshed out enough for me to care what direction the romance went in. There was a small mystery brought up with the Sisterhood at the beginning, but it was dropped fairly quickly. I assume it’ll come back in later books. All in all, it was kind of a middling read for me. I liked the story enough that I may pick up the other two books when in the zombie mood, but not enough to be in any hurry.

Notes from the Inner Writer: The choice of first person, present tense was interesting. It worked for me in the same way it did in The Hunger Games, causing the action to feel more immediate and removing any chance for the “future” version of the narrator to comment outside the narrative. This seems to be becoming more common, especially in Y.A. fiction. It could also work as a way to remove the feeling of “well obviously the main character survives, she’s telling the story!” that can sometimes come with first person in the classic past tense, adding to the tension of the story.

Extra thoughts, with spoilers:
Chain-link fences? Really? You mean to tell me that for at least four generations, the zombie hordes have been kept out of the village (and Forest paths) by simple chain-link fences? I get that the Guardians were in charge up maintenance, but there is a sequence in the second half of the book where the characters are trapped in an attic and the zombies pile themselves on top of one another until the mound is high enough that they can beat on the door until it breaks open. I actually loved the use of that idea, because that’s what zombies do, but by using it in that sequence, it brought the silliness of the fences into starker relief. If the zombies can get into the attic that way, why haven’t they simply piled themselves over the fences or pushed the fences over from the weight of so many pressing against them?