Friday Firsts – The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey

Friday Firsts is a new meme that will run every Friday here on Tenacious Reader. It will feature the first few sentences/paragraph of my current book and my first impressions as well. It’s meant to be a quick and easy way to share a bit about what I am reading, and I would love to hear others join in sharing their current reads as well.

The bucks have all been passed and the arguments thrashed out until they don’t even bleed any more. Finally, after a hundred false starts, the Rosalind Franklin begins her northward journey— from Beacon on the south coast of England all the way to the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. There aren’t many who think she’ll make it that far, but they wave her off with bands and garlands all the same. They cheer the bare possibility.

Rosie is an awesome thing to behold, a land leviathan, but she’s not by any means the biggest thing that ever rolled. In the years before the Breakdown, the most luxurious motor homes, the class A diesel-pushers, were a good sixteen or seventeen metres long. Rosie is smaller than that: she has to be because her armour plating is extremely thick and there’s a limit to the weight her treads will carry. In order to accommodate a crew of twelve, certain luxuries have had to be sacrificed. There’s a single shower and a single latrine, with a rota that’s rigorously maintained. The only private space is in the bunks, which are tiered three-high like a Tokyo coffin hotel.

The going is slow, a pilgrimage through a world that turned its back on humankind the best part of a decade ago. Dr. Fournier, in an inspirational speech, likens the crew to the wise men in the Bible who followed a star. Nobody else in the crew finds the analogy plausible or appealing. There are twelve of them, for one thing— more like the apostles than the wise men, if they were in the Jesus business in the first place, and they are not in any sense following a star. They’re following the trail blazed a year before by another team in an armoured vehicle exactly like their own— a trail planned out by a panel of fractious experts, through every terrain that mainland Britain has to offer. Fields and meadows, woodland and hills, the peat bogs of Norfolk and the Yorkshire moors. All these things look, at least to Dr. Samrina Khan, very much as she remembers them looking in former times. Recent events— the collapse of global civilisation and the near-extinction of the human species— have left no mark on them that she can see. Khan is not surprised.

Carey, M. R. (2017-05-02). The Boy on the Bridge (Kindle Locations 125-139). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

My First Impressions

Well, my first impression was to remember how much I loved The Girl with All the Gifts, and excitement to be back in that world. I am definitely intrigued, there is something that happens early that has really peaked my curiosity. Looking forward to reading the rest!

What are you reading right now? Did it start out strong? Feel free to share in the comments