Fellside by M.R Carey - Too Slow and Not Enough Brain Guzzling Monsters

The unmissable and highly anticipated new literary thriller from the author of the international phenomenon The Girl With All the Gifts.

Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.

It's a place where even the walls whisper.

And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess.

Will she listen?

From the author of The Girl With All The Gifts (possibly one of the best novels I've read this year) comes Fellside (possibly one of the most annoying books I've ever read).

Annoying, that is, because I really wanted to love it. But I didn't.

First of all, let's just say that after The Girl With All The Gifts, I had some really quite enormous expectations - which might be where the problem lies. After reading his previous book in one (maybe two) sittings, it shocked me so much that I didn't like this that much.

Let's make this clear: this isn't the Girl With All The Gifts, and I don't have a problem with that. But it just wasn't comparable to his previous work at all - it just didn't live up to my expectations. Instead of a thrill heavy, action-y plot - what we got was a slow burner, something that seemed to be leading up to something, but never got there. I don't have a problem with slower books - far from it, but I just think there's a time and place. Lots of people talk about how this slow pace gave a ghostly feel - but I never got that. At times, the whole thing just felt incredibly tedious.

That said, this was brilliantly researched, just like Girl. However, here I don't feel like it worked that well. With Girl, it fitted in seamlessly - it turned your average zombie story into something so much more. Here, though, the text either seems to be either made up of ridiculously detailed drug taking (which I didn't particularly enjoy) and a few other storylines which, as far as I can tell, did nothing for the plot. At least I think the drug taking was research. Either that or the author has a serious addiction.

Basically, this just didn't grip me as much as I wanted it to. I wanted to love and enjoy this and fall in love with a new world and that just didn't happen.

However, in other news, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS TRAILER HAS BEEN RELEASED! WHOOO! As far as I can tell, it seems to follow the basic storyline pretty closely, and all the actors seem to fit the parts just as I imagined! Feast your eyes here:

Have you read Fellside? What about Girl? What did you think?