M.R. Carey
M.R. Carey
Author Overview By the Side Quest Book Club Podcast
“You can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them.”
~ The Girl with All the Gifts
Why we love M.R. Carey
In this episode of The Side Quest Podcast, Slava and Jonathan are joined by guest Abby from BooksAndCrannies2023 to explore the chilling and thought-provoking novel The Girl With All The Gifts. The trio dives deep into the book’s core themes, including the unique perspective offered by Melanie, the ethical and moral dilemmas surrounding scientific survival, and how the story balances horror with emotional weight.
Abby from @booksandcrannies2023 recommended this book. Make sure to follow her and check out her Goodreads account and Pango Bookstore.
Author Highlights
Here is what you can expect from an M.R. Carey story…
Relatable characters and worlds
Zombies
Female protagonists and unconventional heroines
High-concept speculative fiction setting
Author Bio
M. R. Carey (Mike Carey, b. 1959) is a British novelist, screenwriter, and comics writer who has also published as Adam Blake. He is the father of author Louise Carey and has collaborated with her and his wife, Linda Carey, on several works of fiction.
Carey first gained recognition in UK comics with Th1rt3en (2002) and Carver Hale (2001) for 2000 AD. He went on to write extensively for DC and Marvel, including Hellblazer, X-Men: Legacy, and graphic adaptations of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow. His most acclaimed comics achievement is the Lucifer series (1999–2006), a metaphysical fantasy spun out of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. Across its 75 issues, Lucifer explores cosmic rebellion, new universes, and divine succession, and is collected in eleven graphic novel volumes beginning with Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway (2001).
In prose, Carey is known for the Felix Castor urban fantasy series (The Devil You Know, 2006), the Adam Blake thrillers beginning with The Dead Sea Deception (2011), and collaborative works such as The Steel Seraglio (2012, also published as The City of Silk and Steel) and The House of War and Witness (2014). His breakout novel, The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), reimagines the zombie pandemic through the lens of evolution and survival, and was adapted into a 2016 film.
Carey has continued to expand into speculative fiction with the Rampart trilogy, starting with The Book of Koli (2020), which depicts a far-future society treating remnants of lost technology as magic. His work consistently blends horror, fantasy, and science fiction with strong characters and moral complexity, making him a distinctive voice in contemporary speculative fiction.
This bio is an abridged and edited version of M.R. Carey’s Wikipedia Page and his write-up on the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction website.
Slava’s Thoughts
I am so glad that Abby suggested M. R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts. It's the only book of his I've read so far, but one that left a strong impression. What I loved about it, and why we covered it on The Side Quest Book Club Podcast, is how Carey takes a familiar zombie setup and turns it into something more thoughtful. That mix of horror, science fiction, and philosophy is precisely what draws me to speculative fiction.
Jonathan’s Thoughts
At first, I struggled to connect with The Girl with All the Gifts—I’m the kind of reader who’s always searching for the big questions a story is trying to answer. But once the world opened up and Carey began revealing the deeper implications of the infection and what it meant to be human, I enjoyed the book more. What I did love most was how the unique take on the ancient myth of Pandora’s Box. Where the book blended science, philosophy, and moral tension in a way that made me wrestle with every choice the characters made.
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