Blackout

And so to the last of the Newsflesh trilogy. This is going to be hard to review because even without giving away too much about what happens in this book, I’d inevitably give away some of what happened in books 1 and 2. So in a very brief summary about the whole trilogy, it’s about zombies, it’s about truth, it’s about personal responsibility, it’s about a new form of journalism (which zombies or not, we’re beginning to see in today’s world) and it’s about how politicians can use fear to control us (very much today’s world in a way, or at least they try and use fear). It’s a good series, it looks at zombies from quite a different angle, in that society has survived the zombie uprising and has adapted around them, so that everything is still pretty ‘civilised’ and it’s a brilliant allegory about how politicians use the fear of ‘others’ in today’s society.

Blackout **** (out of 5 stars)

Newsflesh trilogy as a whole ***** (out of 5 stars)

Deadline

I read the first of the Newsflesh trilogy, Feed, last year and absolutely loved it, so I had to read the next one, Deadline. Now, warning, if you haven’t read Feed and you want to, go and read my review of that instead, as this review includes spoilers for the first book ……

We left The After The End Times news team at the end of Feed grieving for George, the main principal character and at the beginning of Deadline, about a year later, Shaun, her brother and now only head of After The End Times, is falling to pieces, George is still around, in his head. When a doctor from the CDC turns up and all hell breaks loose moments later, Shaun and his team and thrown back head first into the conspiracy that killed his sister. Expect zombies, virology, mad scientists and some cool social media stuff.

What I really like about the Newsflesh trilogy is that the main characters are so believable, they are thrown into situations where they go through hell but keep going because they have no choice / want to discover the truth / hit back against the bad guys but unlike other thrillers where the heroes go through all sorts of sh*t and don’t really seem that affected, the characters in Newsflesh spend most of the time falling apart, shaking with anxiety and dropping with exhaustion, yet they continue for the same reason I’d continue, because they ‘had to’, it was right thing to do, to uncover the conspiracy.

I have the final part of the trilogy waiting for me now on my iPad, I am not going to leave a gap of 5 months before reading the next one, how about 5 minutes?

(One final note, there are several scenes in Deadline where the characters are basically sitting round a table info dumping, this is always a risky strategy in books but I think necessary here as the plot is quite ‘technical’, so we need to hear the ‘science’ behind the plot line as much as the characters do. If you’ve read the book do you think Grant handled those scenes well? I think she did.)

***** (out of 5)

Feed

You know, sometimes I think I may love the books I initially found hard to get into, even more when after the perseverance they turn into something absolutely brilliant. Feed by Mira Grant is one such book, set around 30 years into the future, we’re now in a post zombie apocalypse world, where it almost, but not quite, went to pot. Society is still functioning, even with strident security restrictions and massive no go areas and people get on with things, albeit in a slightly different way to how they did it before. One such change is in journalism, with bloggers now the trusted news media, in Feed we follow one such blogging team; George – the newsie, Shaun – the Irwin (as in Steve Irwin, Irwins go poke zombies with sticks) and Buffy – the fictional (she writes stories and keeps the team’s tech devices up to date), as they follow a senator as he goes on tour around the country, as he tries to win the party nomination for presidency. As you can imagine, political tours when there are zombies around are tricky, difficult things, particularly when it soon appears that some outside force doesn’t want the tour to go as planned ……

I thought Feed was an incredibly clever book, it’s clear throughout the book that Grant has constructed this post ‘zombie apocalypse’ world in meticulous detail (which may have been why I found the book slow going at first, as she had to create the world before the action started, but it was worth it). She’s thought of why and how the zombie apocalypse happened, going right into the ‘biology’ of it and she’s really thought of how society would change. I particularly loved the little details in the book, like how George Romero went from horror film maker to saviour and how Apple make the creme de la creme field testing kits with the highest degree of accuracy (and the highest cost). I loved how Grant depicted social media evolving and I got a kick out of a few of the scenes in the book involved people doing what I do in my real life job. I also loved how this book really is a parable about today’s society and how we react with fear and how it restricts our freedoms, just replace the zombies with terrorists.

I also really loved, when I got to the end of the book, discovering that Feed is actually the first in a trilogy, bliss! So torn now though, I had another book lined up, which I’m also desperate to read (which is also part of another trilogy I love), so argh, torn between two trilogies now (both books are slogging it out on my iPhone as I type, which one shall I read first – I love / hate being able to download books immediately!).