Feed, Mira Grant
Puck, do not read this review. Anyone else who is triggered by zombies of any sort, do not read this review. If you have not read Feed, do not read the marked sections of this review or the comments; since it came out so long ago (hah, all of three months), I merrily spoil shit all over the place, and there will probably be spoilers in the comments, and Feed is a book for which you do not want to be spoiled. Trust me on this.
Also, there is a lot of swearing. This is the kind of book that makes me swear in sheer admiration of its awesome.
I literally just closed Feed five minutes ago. That is how fast I had to run my rear down to my computer to write this review for you all, because holy fucking shit was this ever a good book.
Feed has been ably described as Night of the Living Dead meets The West Wing, with a dash of The Middleman and maybe a smidgeon of The Dresden Files. It takes place in a world where the zombie uprising has occured, and... we survived, and so did they, and what happens now? Answer: life goes on. People go to work and have children and follow political campaigns and poke zombies with sticks and jump over a massive herd of them on a motorcycle-- actually, those last two are maybe just Georgia and Shaun Mason, brother-and-sister blogger team extraordinaire. As Feed starts out, they have just landed the spot of staff bloggers to Senator Peter Ryman, Republican candidate for President of the United States. Problems immediately start to arise; Georgia and Shaun immediately start investigating. And that's where things get... interesting.
A side note. I am really amazingly glad that Ryman is a Republican, because I adore him (and his wife; Emily Ryman is so freaking cool. My kinda girl), and it's so nice to see someone like him turn up. I am sick and tired of Republicans being foaming-at-the-mouth crazy fundies in fiction. I was thrilled when Alan Alda's character turned up on The West Wing for more reasons than just getting to indulge my mad crush on him. More awesome Republicans in fiction, please.
Okay. Back to Feed.
I love this book wholeheartedly. I love it for the characters. I love Shaun and his dry, wisecracking ways. I love Georgia and her first-person smartass narration, and the way she grabs onto the truth with both hands and holds on; she bears a strong resemblence to another of my favorite characters, one Samuel Vimes, that way. I love their tech Buffy, for her dreamy space-cadet manner and the things she writes. I love Georgia's BFF Mahir, and I love (as previously mentioned) Senator and Mrs. Ryman, and I love Steve, the security guy, and I love Rick, and oh, man. The characters are so freaking real, here. Even Tyrone, the security guy who only gets a few lines, he's so real I feel like I could walk around a corner and run into him. Grant nails her characters and nails them fast, and never ever lets them become horror-movie cliches.
Which brings me to the second reason I love this book. The worldbuilding is first-rate, spot-on, amazing. Georgia will occasionally stop to explain something, such as the Raskin-Watts ruling (which is something of a Chekhov's Story, because it has a major impact on the last half of the book), but it never feels forced or info-dumpy. She's explaining something because people don't know it, and they'll need to. And everything makes sense. The zombies in particular, how they get to be zombies, it makes perfect sense. And the little nods to George Romero and Night of the Living Dead, they're entirely intentional and part of the story. It's never made clear if Shaun is named after Shaun of the Dead, but I really hope he is because that would be awesome and would make my crush on him worse. And the definition of the different blogger classifications is awesome, but I'll let you read that joke for yourself.
Feed is, overall, an exploration of a world. But it is also a story of a brother and sister who love each other more than life, and it is the story of a political campaign under fire, and it is the story of terror and fear, and the differnce. I think that last political aspect was what really got me about Feed. As Grant says in an interview at the end of the book, "Fear says, 'Do not actually put your hand in the alligator,' while terror says, 'Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist.'" Feed explores that division in the most subtle, compelling, and intelligent of ways. It's worth a read for that alone.
You know. Quite apart from its other amazing qualities. I seriously don't think that this book struck a wrong note for me, and I don't even like zombies. The only bad thing I have to say about it is that it gave me nightmares, so I had to stop reading for a bit and start again when I was on a plane and zombies couldn't get me. It hits the ground running with Georgia and Shaun, as previously mentioned, jumping over a herd of zombies on a motorcycle, and never lets up from there on to its gutwrenching, heartbreaking climax. I cried so hard. So basically, if anything in this review sounds good? Go get Feed.
Beyond this point there are spoilers.
Okay, so let's talk about it in greater detail. Free-for-all in the comments.
I'll kick things off and say that I cannot fucking believe Mira Grant had the guts to kill off her own first-person narrator. In-text. Speaking as a writer, that's a really risky decision to make without it coming off as cheesy or annoying, but I think we can all agree that she pulled it off in style. And Shaun, oh, Shaun, he broke my heart. I'm so glad he keeps talking to Georgia, but I'm afraid that terrible, terrible things are going to happen in the next book. I can only hope Shaun stays human through it all. He's already lost his sense of fun in recklessness, poor guy.
No talk to me on this one. Don't want to spoil anyone who's interested.
Also, there is a lot of swearing. This is the kind of book that makes me swear in sheer admiration of its awesome.
I literally just closed Feed five minutes ago. That is how fast I had to run my rear down to my computer to write this review for you all, because holy fucking shit was this ever a good book.
Feed has been ably described as Night of the Living Dead meets The West Wing, with a dash of The Middleman and maybe a smidgeon of The Dresden Files. It takes place in a world where the zombie uprising has occured, and... we survived, and so did they, and what happens now? Answer: life goes on. People go to work and have children and follow political campaigns and poke zombies with sticks and jump over a massive herd of them on a motorcycle-- actually, those last two are maybe just Georgia and Shaun Mason, brother-and-sister blogger team extraordinaire. As Feed starts out, they have just landed the spot of staff bloggers to Senator Peter Ryman, Republican candidate for President of the United States. Problems immediately start to arise; Georgia and Shaun immediately start investigating. And that's where things get... interesting.
A side note. I am really amazingly glad that Ryman is a Republican, because I adore him (and his wife; Emily Ryman is so freaking cool. My kinda girl), and it's so nice to see someone like him turn up. I am sick and tired of Republicans being foaming-at-the-mouth crazy fundies in fiction. I was thrilled when Alan Alda's character turned up on The West Wing for more reasons than just getting to indulge my mad crush on him. More awesome Republicans in fiction, please.
Okay. Back to Feed.
I love this book wholeheartedly. I love it for the characters. I love Shaun and his dry, wisecracking ways. I love Georgia and her first-person smartass narration, and the way she grabs onto the truth with both hands and holds on; she bears a strong resemblence to another of my favorite characters, one Samuel Vimes, that way. I love their tech Buffy, for her dreamy space-cadet manner and the things she writes. I love Georgia's BFF Mahir, and I love (as previously mentioned) Senator and Mrs. Ryman, and I love Steve, the security guy, and I love Rick, and oh, man. The characters are so freaking real, here. Even Tyrone, the security guy who only gets a few lines, he's so real I feel like I could walk around a corner and run into him. Grant nails her characters and nails them fast, and never ever lets them become horror-movie cliches.
Which brings me to the second reason I love this book. The worldbuilding is first-rate, spot-on, amazing. Georgia will occasionally stop to explain something, such as the Raskin-Watts ruling (which is something of a Chekhov's Story, because it has a major impact on the last half of the book), but it never feels forced or info-dumpy. She's explaining something because people don't know it, and they'll need to. And everything makes sense. The zombies in particular, how they get to be zombies, it makes perfect sense. And the little nods to George Romero and Night of the Living Dead, they're entirely intentional and part of the story. It's never made clear if Shaun is named after Shaun of the Dead, but I really hope he is because that would be awesome and would make my crush on him worse. And the definition of the different blogger classifications is awesome, but I'll let you read that joke for yourself.
Feed is, overall, an exploration of a world. But it is also a story of a brother and sister who love each other more than life, and it is the story of a political campaign under fire, and it is the story of terror and fear, and the differnce. I think that last political aspect was what really got me about Feed. As Grant says in an interview at the end of the book, "Fear says, 'Do not actually put your hand in the alligator,' while terror says, 'Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist.'" Feed explores that division in the most subtle, compelling, and intelligent of ways. It's worth a read for that alone.
You know. Quite apart from its other amazing qualities. I seriously don't think that this book struck a wrong note for me, and I don't even like zombies. The only bad thing I have to say about it is that it gave me nightmares, so I had to stop reading for a bit and start again when I was on a plane and zombies couldn't get me. It hits the ground running with Georgia and Shaun, as previously mentioned, jumping over a herd of zombies on a motorcycle, and never lets up from there on to its gutwrenching, heartbreaking climax. I cried so hard. So basically, if anything in this review sounds good? Go get Feed.
Beyond this point there are spoilers.
Okay, so let's talk about it in greater detail. Free-for-all in the comments.
I'll kick things off and say that I cannot fucking believe Mira Grant had the guts to kill off her own first-person narrator. In-text. Speaking as a writer, that's a really risky decision to make without it coming off as cheesy or annoying, but I think we can all agree that she pulled it off in style. And Shaun, oh, Shaun, he broke my heart. I'm so glad he keeps talking to Georgia, but I'm afraid that terrible, terrible things are going to happen in the next book. I can only hope Shaun stays human through it all. He's already lost his sense of fun in recklessness, poor guy.
No talk to me on this one. Don't want to spoil anyone who's interested.