The Infects

Title: The Infects

Author: Sean Beaudoin

Publisher: Candlewick Press (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult Fiction

Length: 347 pages

Synopsis:  Nick Sole’s life is not exactly ordinary.  Unfortunately, it’s not-exactly-ordinary in all the wrong ways.  His sister is a whiz with videogames, but since she’s been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, no one but Nick seems to treat her like a person.  His mom walked out when they were young, and his dad lost his job in research and development at Rebozzo’s chicken factory.  Now he’s the Dude instead of a dad, and it’s up to Nick to keep the family together, working nights at the chicken factory just to pay the rent.  When Nick makes a terrible mistake on the factory line, he finds himself shipped off to a juvenile reform camp where everything begins to fall apart.  Everything, and everyone.  Literally. 

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion: I’ll admit, I don’t love zombies.  There seems to be a bit of a zombie glut in pop culture right now, and I’ve had my fill, as it were, of desiccated flesh.  This book seemed to be trying to find its niche within the ranks of the animated dead, but it couldn’t quite decide where it wanted to go.  Did it want to snidely mock horror movies and the zombie genre in general?  Did it want to suggest a dystopian future that picks up where the typical zombie flick leaves off?  Did it want to write a poignant teen story?  Well… yes.  But it wanted to do all those things at once, and in different ways.  There’s a lot about this book that’s not bad.  In fact, it has elements that are quite good.  But to me it really did feel like three or four different books that coexisted alongside one another rather than merging together into a single story.  It’s unique, yes, and I’ll give it points for that, but it felt at times like someone had cut and pasted chapters from Louis Sachar’s Holes alongside pages out of Twilight and the script to some poorly done B horror movie featuring a cast of largely superfluous and utterly unmemorable teens.