History Literature / TheForestOfHandsAndTeeth

* ZombieInfectee: Mary's mother in the beginning. [[spoiler: Later, Beth and Travis.]]

* LockedAwayInAMonastery: Mary is sent to live with the Sisterhood after her mother is Infected. [[spoiler: When Mary says that she didn't have a choice (after her mother's un-death, her brother kicked her out and she wasn't getting married) of whether or not to stay with them,]]the head nun, Sister Tabitha [[spoiler: threatens to [[FateWorseThanDeath turn Mary out into the Forest]] to show her that "There is always a choice." ]]

** The sequels go into a bit more detail: apparently, if one of the zombies [[spoiler:is turned when there are no other zombies around, it becomes a "breaker" or a fast zombie, in order to spread the infection more quickly.]] However, it isn't ever explained [[spoiler:who Gabrielle was, or why the Sisterhood wanted to make her into a breaker, or really what any of that had to do with the plot other than letting Mary know there was a world outside.]] So it still does qualify as a WhatHappenedToTheMouse.
*** Actually, the Roman numerals Gabrielle left on the window pane suggest that [[spoiler: she was a survivor from the infected village Mary and the others stumble upon later in the first book.]] What the Sisterhood was doing with her is a little more complicated and less obvious. In the first book, [[spoiler: Mary enters a forbidden series of chambers, where she finds a list of names and a journal detailing accounts of infected. This implies the Sisterhood was studying the behavior of the zombies, if not outright intentionally infecting certain people to do so.]] In the second novel, [[spoiler: Gabrielle, the daughter Mary named for the girl in the red vest, follows her mother back to the village of her birth. There, she finds records pertaining to the Sisterhood that imply that they were hiding the existence of survivors who came to the village in a misguided attempt to protect the people from the dangers of the outside world.]] With this information in mind, we can potentially hypothesize [[spoiler: that the Sisterhood eventually decided to destroy evidence of outsiders by using them to study the infected. Gabrielle arrived at the village seeking refuge and instead found herself the subject of one of their experiments. She became a Breaker because the specific experiment she fell victim to was one where the they were studying the impact of infection under isolation.]]

* XMeetsY: ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' meets {{Dystopia}}.

* LockedAwayInAMonastery: Mary is sent to live with the Sisterhood after her mother is Infected. [[spoiler: When Mary says that she didn't have a choice (after her mother's un-death, her brother kicked her out and she wasn't getting married) of whether or not to stay with them,]]the head nun, Sister Tabitha [[spoiler: threatens to [[FateWorseThanDeath turn Mary out into the Forest]]to show her that "There is always a choice." ]]

* RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: implied. It's said repeatedly that the zombies will keep shambling until they're torn apart, but when decapitated or given a hard enough blow to the head, they "redie".

* XMeetsY: ''Film/DawnOfTheDead'' meets {{Dystopia}}.

* Squick: some of the descriptions of the Unconsecrated are downright [[NauseaFuel disgusting]].

''The Forest of Hands and Teeth'' is a 2009 YA, post-apocalypse novel by Carrie Ryan.

* ZombieInfectee: Mary's mother in the beginning. [[spoiler: Later, Beth and Travis.]]

* ZombieGait: A major plot point is that the Sisterhood created an Unconsecrated that ''didn't'' walk slowly. [[spoiler: this is pretty much the entire reason the fences were breached and the village was lost.]]

* BloodOnTheseHands / ItsAllMyFault: Mary continually blames herself throughout the story for her mother's death, [[spoiler: Gabrielle being infected at the hands of the Sisterhood]] and [[spoiler: Jed's implied [[DisneyVillainDeath death.]] ]] Also, Jacob begging forgiveness for [[spoiler: starting the fire that forced our protagonists to leave the treetop village months early]] which he thought was the reason for [[spoiler: Travis' death. [[ZombieInfectee It wasn't.]] ]]

* FutureImperfect: Mary finds a book of Shakespeare's sonnets and have no idea what they are, and sees Roman numerals on the path and can't understand them.

* LockedAwayInAMonastery: Mary is sent to live with the Sisterhood after her mother is Infected. [[spoiler: when Mary says that she did't have a choice (after her mother's un-death, her brother kicked her out and she wasn't getting married)of whether or not to stay with them,]]the head nun, Sister Tabitha [[spoiler: threatens to [[FateWorseThanDeath turn Mary out into the Forest]]. ]]

* LockedAwayInAMonastery: Mary is sent to live with the Sisterhood after her mother is Infected.
* NotUsingTheZWord: The zombies are called Unconsecrated.

* ZombieApocalypse
* ZombieGait: A major plot point is that the Sisterhood created an Unconsecrated that ''didn't'' walk slowly.
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* XMeetsY: ''DawnOfTheDead'' meets {{Dystopia}}.