The Forest of Hands and Teeth – Carrie Ryan

I am wondering which is more cool in paranormal genre. After the plethora of vampire book there are some good zombie teen fiction now available. Are zombies the new vampires or is this just part of the normal cycle of things. The first thing that attracted me to this book was the title. I was intrigued by the imagery that it conjured up for me; a forest of zombies reaching out with hands and teeth. This is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel where the majority of the human race are mindless cannibalistic zombies. The human race is confined to fenced villages. Mary lives in such a village which has been so isolated from any other humans that they believe that they are the only humans alive. Life involves keeping away from fences which are crowded by zombies trying to get in. The fences are maintained by the Guardians and all boys are trained up into this profession. The village is ruled by the Sisterhood who control all areas of village life such as schooling, marriage, childbirth, and death. Mary has lost her father to the undead and more recently her mother. She is becoming suspicious of the religious Sisterhood who try to rule her life and don't have answers to her questions about the past and the outside. When zombies breech her village Mary and a few others flee into a fenced corridor. No one knows were it will lead nor what dangers it holds. All that keeps Mary going is the stories passed down by her mother and her mothers mother and generations before of the ocean and a life free of the undead.
This is a good zombie read full of the tension that zombies, who are stronger than humans and relentless in their need to human flesh, bring to a story line. I was riveted by the intrigue of the Sisterhood and the way that tradition had been built on misunderstanding and lies to a build a religious order that most people never question. Mary's questioning mirrors teenagers today that are always questioning boundaries and norms that others don't think to question. Mary has a hope, unlike rest of the survivors, which gives her a will to survive and beat the odds stacked against her.
Ryan also adds a bit of teen romance to balance the desperation of the story and to round it off.
8/10

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." Anyone familiar with Jane Austen will realize that this is a twist on her famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice. Lately I have been reading quite a bit of Jane Austen fan fiction. Mostly these follow the lives of Austen's characters such as Elizabeth Bennett after her marriage to Darcy. They are often romantic but lack the wit of Austen's original novels.
After reading the first line of the Pride and Prejudice and zombies I was hesitant to continue reading but I am glad that I did. This book is a parody of Austen's original book, using her original text and adding scenes of zombie fighting action. It is set in a time that England (and the world) has been beset by a plague that afflicted many of the living, turning them to zombies. The Bennett sisters are known, not only for their beauty but for their strength and skill in battle against the zombies in Hertfordshire. This is largely due to their father who sent them to China to learn the ninja arts. Mrs Bennett is still scheming to marry her daughters off and the story follows Austen's plot line but mashes it with zombie fighting mayhem. Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy follow their classic pride and prejudice relationship with small twists but the fate of Charlotte Lucas is not so rosy. The book keeps Austen's original wittiness and perhaps at times ventures into the ridiculous as the characters deal with zombies hoards. But it somehow works. Perhaps it is because Austen's original work was very 'tongue in cheek' about the society she found herself in that the presence of zombies is not as unexpected as it could be. As an Austen fan who enjoys forays into the paranormal, I found this book an enjoyable read. 8/10