The end of the world didn’t happen overnight.
After years of societal breakdowns, wars and quakes and rising tides, humanity was already near the edge. Then came a final blow no one could have expected: all the world’s corpses rising up to make more.
Born into this bleak and bloody landscape, twelve-year-old Julie struggles to hold on to hope as she and her parents drive across the wastelands of America, a nightmarish road trip in search of a new home.
Hungry, lost, and scared, sixteen-year-old Nora finds herself her brother’s sole guardian after her parents abandon them in the not-quite-empty ruins of Seattle.
And in the darkness of a forest, a dead man opens his eyes. Who is he? What is he? With no clues beyond a red tie and the letter “R,” he must unravel the grim mystery of his existence—right after he learns how to think, how to walk, and how to satisfy the monster howling in his belly.
Some years ago, I remember loving Warm Bodies enough that I recommended it to most everyone I know who reads. When I found out that its author Isaac Marion released a novella, I wanted to find a copy of it here in the Philippines–but I never did. So, when I got a copy of Warm Bodies‘s actual sequel, I decided to buy the novella off Amazon.
I’m not sure how important this novella is going to be once I read The Burning World, but I have this to say: The New Hunger does not have anything that I loved about Warm Bodies.
Yes, the characters are the same. But that’s where I think the biggest problem of the novella stems from: it’s the same. Nothing’s new. The only thing that makes it different from Warm Bodies is the fact that the characters haven’t met each other yet. And while, at the very least, we get some action from the chapters featuring Nora. The ones that follow Julie and ‘R’ are especially dull: there’s no threat, there’s no development–they’re just moving pieces filling time until something bigger happens.
When I first read that there was going to be a novella that serves as a prelude to Warm Bodies, I had hoped it would make the book’s world richer–it did not. It felt like a money-grab for fans of the movie who want something new to sink their teeth into after watching the film.
I hope The Burning World, the actual sequel, isn’t anything like this novella.
taking a break 