R and Julie are back, but this time we’re being shown their tumultuous beginnings.
In Isaac Marion’s prequel to Warm Bodies, The New Hunger, we get a glimpse into what the post-apocalyptic world looked like at its start. All our favorite characters are back, but as softer, smoother around the edges versions of themselves. Instead of just being taken on R’s journey in the beginning, we get to see the paths that led our other favorite Warm Bodies characters to the lives they live later on in the remains of their world.
Marion continues the easy writing style of his first novel with a twist. The story follows Nora and Julie, as well as R, with a slight nod in M’s direction as well. Marion goes on to give glimpses of the psyches that later become tortured and hardened by the twisted and broken world they are forced to survive in. Not only does Marion take the reader on the journey of following behind his wonderful characters, we get to see the moral and emotional dilemmas they face during that time. From Nora and her brother finding the man in the Space Needle, to Julie and her parents’ trek across the country to the Canadian border to find solace in what is supposed to be a zombie-free area. Marion forces the reader to watch R’s internal struggle to stop the overwhelming emptiness he feels and the fight with his internal brute to “take, get, steal, have fill… EAT.â€
Marion takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster ride of ups and downs, building up hope for something better, only to dash it against the rocks below. Leaving the reader feeling the pain of the characters, aching for something better than the broken world they’re left with. From the very beginning, Marion pushes the reader into the life of each character in such a way that their pain can’t be contained just in the words on the page in front of you. The pain, joy, desperation, hunger, helplessness and anxiety that each one feels on their journey is pushed in the reader’s face as an undeniable force to be reckoned with. Watching as R struggles with the base desires of The Brute to leave the different blonde girl alone, following along as he relearns the world around him. Marion leaves each character something they had a tenuous hold on to begin with- a deep seated grasp of hope. Hope of a better world, a better life, hope that there truly is something more out there to be found and enjoyed.
Marion’s planted seed of hope is infectious all on its own. By the last page, the reader is left feeling buoyant and holding tight to the feeling that there are better things to come. And everyone can use a little hope every once in a while, even during the zombie apocalypse.
