this book was so good!!! i absolutely fell into this world and became so invested. i love spore-horror or anything related to mushrooms in books so this was perfect! i even almost cried at the end because i became so invested and the book ended so well! 

first 75% too slow, last 25% rushed 

so fun fact about me, i was the world's biggest coward as a kid. i was scared of everything. including certain episodes of spongebob. an episode of martha speaks (you know, the show about the talking dog for six year olds?) gave me Nightmares. at the top of the list of all of these many, many fears was zombies. which is a little silly looking back on it. the public perception of these guys is that they're slow-moving, literally brainless creatures that are only really threatening in large groups, and even then they're one of the easiest supernatural creatures to kill. even when i grew out of the fear, i've never really had interest in reading zombie apocalypse fiction because of its tendency for Big Military Action Scenes. honestly this turns me off of a lot of apocalypse fiction, mostly the kind that involves fighting a lot of guys. that and it just makes me depressed.

but. i am always a sucker for Getting Creative With It. 

see now this isn't the only zombie story to take the route it does (and i mean come on, cordyceps is like Made for this kinda shit. right up there with chronic wasting disease on the "wouldn't it suck like so bad if humans could get this?" chart) but this was a few years back now so i'm willing to assume it was quite novel at the time and for me, a zombie noob, it's still quite novel now. though i know the last of us did something similar because i heard about the last of us everywhere. and i still liked it! especially That Bit at the end. even if i kind of predicted the twist regarding melanie and the other kids being a new kind of zombie.

characters were...well i liked the women the most but isn't that usually a given. melanie was good. i enjoy precocious kids especially if they're somehow Important but can't fully grasp the how or why of it until they start using it to their benefit. helen was fun, even if her whole "i'm trying to stay detached" chapter at the beginning felt kind of pointless, especially considering it never became relevant again. why couldn't she just genuinely be the Fun Teacher who cares about the kids a little too much? it felt so pointless and weird. but whatever. dr. caldwell is always a character archetpye i enjoy at the very least because they're just fun to read about. yay fucked up scientists yay!

her reaction to her blood poisoning and her death was very fitting for her and i liked that she stayed true to her character till the end.

gallagher was fine. he was kind of sweet. but. god this is going to make me sound like an asshole but i just cannot relate to straight men narrators. no. hey. fuck that's not even true because i related to carter my good friend charles carter from a few books ago just fine! but it's because he didn't talk or think about women like they were pieces of meat! and that guy was from the 1920s! (no way to tell what the real guy thought about them now but you know what i'm getting at here.) i KNOW. it adds realism to the text and all that i KNOW this is a matter of personal taste i KNOW it makes me less of an objective reader but men being rampantly horny about women who aren't into them just gives me the fucking ick!! whatever people will be sexually attracted to each other. i KNOW. but this shit will probably make me like the book less. had the same problem with sergeant parks but honestly my bigger issue was trying to push the narrative that he was bonding all cutely with melanie when he Tried To Choke Her. we remember that right. we remember he did that. man you can't found family that out of existence. he probably did worse. and i KNOW he's like a tough military guy or whatever but i don't care. this is the exact reason why i don't like tough military guys and i don't like the fetishization of men's anger.

any of the "romantic" bits between him and helen made me roll my eyes SO hard.

see 99% of the time i just can't get behind stuff trying to make me sympathize with soldiers or cops. and that's probably just how it's gonna be.

i liked the beginning and ending of the book the most. still don't really think apocalypse fiction is for me, for a multitude of reasons, but i probably enjoyed this more than i'd enjoy most of it. not much else to say--i've read better, but i've read much, much worse.