“Of Flesh and Feathers” by L. M. Pierce

I’m not sure what it says about me that the moment I saw that this was a book about a zombie apocalypse with a literal chicken as the protagonist, my reaction was basically “oh fuck yes.” But even though I can’t define what exactly it does say about me, I do know that I’m proud of it.

Things have been rough for Chicory and the rest of her flock. Their human hasn’t been around to feed them for a while, and the foraging around the yard is getting pretty slim. But when Chicory’s friend Fayne (who always seemed to know things she shouldn’t, and is a bit of a cracked egg besides) warns the rest of the chickens that they need to leave their coop and do it soon, Chicory is prepared to trust her. Fayne can’t (or won’t) say what the danger is, but she’s very frightened of it and says she knows of a distant valley where they’ll be safe.

What follows is surprisingly fun. I was worried this was going to be one-joke and one-dimensional, but it was anything but. Sure, the main characters are mostly chickens (the farm dog tags along as well), but Pierce does an excellent job of making them into *people*. Frightened (and feathery) people venturing far outside their past experiences, enduring never-before-felt hardships and depredation, all in the hope of reaching an uncertain promise of safety.

I want to avoid spoilers, but I do want to say that the choice of chickens as the protagonists (as opposed to, say, cows, or llamas, or squirrels) was not done randomly. There is plot-significance there.

This wasn’t a book that is going to change my life. It didn’t deeply move me. But I enjoyed reading it, and now I can check “book about zombies told from the perspective of a chicken” off of my bucket list.