Grant, Mira: Deadline
Deadline (2011)
Written by: Mira Grant
Genre: Horror
Pages: 624 (Kindle)
Series: Book Two (Newsflesh Trilogy)
Why I Read It: Mira Grant's Feed was one of the major surprises for me last year. We read it for my October 2011 book club, and I feel in love with the book pretty hard. So hard that the question wasn't whether or not I was going to buy the sequel, but whether or not I'd get the hardcopy or the Kindle. I decided on the Kindle because my tiny hands are protesting thick books more and more (which is the reason I still haven't finished Wise Man's Fear), and I gobbled down the book the instant I was able.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as fun when you've lost as much as he has.
But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.
Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: OMG YAY. I can't talk about this book without spoilers, not if I want to be coherent. But don't worry, if you haven't read it yet and just want a non-spoilery reason why you SHOULD read the book, skip to "My Rating" and you'll be fine. Promise. :) But please, do yourself a favor and DO NOT SPOIL YOURSELF. Read the book, and then come back, and all will be good.
I think the most important thing to note here is how you feel about this book greatly depends on how you like and/or connect to the characters. Not just Shaun, who's narrating this time around, but also George, who shows up as a voice in Shaun's head and sometimes, shows up as an outright hallucination. I know there were a lot of people in the book club who couldn't connect with George, and may find Shaun's reliance on her grating, and then there's readers who couldn't transition into Shaun's narrative, which makes this book a bit problematic, yes?
Me, I was happy as a clam. I loved George and I loved the risk Grant took with Feed, and when we transitioned to Shaun's voice, I was in such shock that in a way, it worked. I couldn't keep reading the same narrative voice after Shaun shot her, so getting the raw emotionalism of Shaun was a welcome transition for me, because after George died, I was feeling pretty raw too.
I'll admit from the start I was worried that Grant had established a pattern. I kept expecting that we'd get a new narrator by the end (we did) because Shaun would get killed. In fact, I was all set for Becks to take over at the end to continue the mission, and boy, oh boy, was I ever surprised.
But I'll get back to that.
I enthralled the moment I started reading. We started out with a similar scene: a crazy Irwin poking a zombie with a stick, and then the tale goes forth from there. We learn that really, Shaun's not been able to deal with his grief of losing George, and it was fascinating to see how George-in-his-head was treated. At one point in the narrative, I honestly wondered if we'd learn that there was something special about Kellis-Amberlee that allowed Shaun to actually really hear George, that he wasn't crazy or losing his mind, but really hearing her. That made for an interesting way to look at those scenes: was Shaun really crazy, or was there something different in him that allowed him to be haunted so? I really wondered when Shaun had his first real breakdown in the van, when Becks said she thought she heard VOICES, plural, not a voice. Was Shaun speaking as George, or was George really there? Or was it a typo? Whatever the case, the fact that Becks heard PLURAL voices makes it delightfully creepy.
I'll be honest: I didn't take a lot of notes here. And half of the notes I did take were of the "holy shit!" variety. The other half of the notes were musing over the government conspiracy, so let's talk about that a bit.
While I was thoroughly engaged, I'll admit I had trouble wrapping my arms around the idea that the CDC and those in similar positions around the world were intentionally preventing humanity from finding a natural immunity to the Kellis-Amberlee. At first, and this is because I was reading so quickly, I thought that the new strands being introduced were strands engineered by the government and released to the population, that this would keep going until they found a strand humanity wouldn't develop an immunity to via reservoir conditions. I seem to remember walking away with this conclusion, but please, if your memory is fresher and if you're more willing to look it up, let me know if I'm on crack. At any rate, I'm all about a government conspiracy, but a GLOBAL conspiracy? That's a wee bit tough to swallow, though I'm waiting to see what answers are revealed in the third book before making my final judgment.
The one thing I'm not sure about was the whole second outbreak at the end of the book. After everything that happened at the CDC, I was convinced that somehow, this new outbreak was indeed a product of the government, and that somehow, the CDC was going to pin this outbreak on Shaun and his team. Yet by time I finished the book, I was given the impression that may not be the case at all. If it is the case, talk about maniacal on the part of the government: that's a nasty mutation of the virus, isn't it? If it isn't the case, this outbreak sort of comes out of left field, and I really hope the third book dives into what happened and why if at all possible. And given where our narrators are (yes, I said narrators), I think it's highly likely we'll learn if this second outbreak is man-made or naturally occurring.
I'm still coming to grips with Shaun's complete and total immunity. Clearly, this will be explored more in book three, but it was startling because I was so expecting for him to die when Grant just pulled the rug out from under me. Yet, it makes sense in a weird sort of poetic justice way. Between George and Shaun, it was Shaun who always thought he'd go first, and now not even the virus will kill him.
Let's talk George, on many levels. First, having her voice in Shaun's head worked for me. Second, I was jarred and startled when we learned that there was a chance, just a chance, she could've recovered from amplification on her own. I was about as sick as Shaun when we learned that, because it was Shaun who had to pull the trigger. I kept thinking back, about how any other author would've found a way to keep George alive in the last book and make this book be about the discovery of how George could survive without turning, you know? But in reality, the CDC knew she'd failed her test, so there's no way she could've gotten out of that van alive.
Yet.
When we learned that Kelly had a clone of herself, I filed away under "Oh, that's neat," knowledge, and then at one point while reading, I entertained the thought of George somehow becoming a clone. I dismissed it right away, because how would that clone have George's memories or personality, you know? So when the final chapter hit, and George was alive, I was completely floored. Floored because at first, I thought she really didn't die, that Shaun didn't really kill her.
But he did. There's no getting around it. George really died. And if you take a look at the sneak peak for the next book, you learn what I already suspected: the George at the end is a clone of the original.
My guess? The third book will alternate points of view between Shaun and George.
I can imagine some people won't be happy with this development. I'm still wondering if this clone diminishes the impact of the original in Feed. I haven't decided, and I don't expect I will decide until I can read the third and final book and look at this trilogy as a whole. For now, I'm quite happy munching on my "holy shit!" reaction to the whole thing, and that's good.
But speaking of George and Shaun: we talked a LOT in our discussion of Feed whether or not the two of them were biological siblings, and whether or not they had sexual relations or if they simply had a really unhealthy dependence on each other.
We get answers.
Yes, their relationship was unhealthy and screwed up. Grant makes that very clear, but I think what's also clear as that both George and Shaun are products of the world they were raised in. So I'm cool with that.
No, they were NOT biologically related. They were born around the same time and have the same color of hair, which made it easy to pass them off as twins. BUT THEY WERE NOT BIOLOGICALLY RELATED.
And here's another "oh shit!" moment for me, after Shaun slept with Becks, when he whispers goodnight to George. The chapter following that little slip all but confirmed that he and George had a sexual relationship, and honestly? That delights me to no end.
I had to ask myself why today, while figuring out what I was going to say for this review. In the first book, I appreciated the fact we had no romance and a close relationship between siblings that bordered on being super-weird. You'd think that this confirmation that they weren't really related, that they were sleeping together, would blow my appreciation out of the water. It didn't, and the reason for that is that I absolutely love screwed up relationships, and the fact we learn this information after George is dead helps keep it in context. We know we, as readers, won't be subjected to a sexual encounter, and that makes it easier to marvel and freak out over the revelation.
How that will change in the third book, however, is beyond me. I'm wondering if the clone of George will allow Shaun the closure he needs to put her death behind him, or if they'll never meet ever again, with the reader being the only one knowing the truth, or what. I wouldn't put anything past Grant, which is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the third book so much.
Because at this point, she's more than earned my trust as a reader. I think most, if not all, of the major complaints (unless you just didn't like the characters) people had in Feed are addressed here, and they're addressed in such a way you know it's an organic part of the story, not just the author plugging in a bit to respond to critics of the first book. I can't stress how happy this book made me, and while I'm a little leery of the ending, I definitely can't wait to see where Grant is taking us.
Some moments that stood out:
" . . . Dave and I, we were doing this . . . this weird circling thing, like we needed to figure out every single line of the script before we could even start the movie. I knew, and he knew, and we didn't do a damn thing about it." She sniffled. A very small sound that seemed loud in the sudden silence of the room. "It's like we thought everything had to be perfect, or it wouldn't work. Like it was a story."
I love this moment, because I think it hits the nail on the head when it comes to how people approach romantic relationships and why we wait. The movie/story bit makes perfect sense to me as a writer too, and I just love the way this is articulated here.
Then there's a more humorous side, courtesy of Dr. Shannon L. Abbey:
DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS (from a t-shirt)
Best wishes, and stay the fuck away from me. (from an email)
I love her!
My Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
So here's the thing: there are roughly six parts in this book (five and an epilogue, if you want to be technical), and there wasn't a single part of the book that didn't have me going "OMG!" or "Oh, shit." To say this book kept me on the edge of my seat is an understatement, but instead of gushing, I want to step back a bit and look at it from a different angle: one of the things I really admire about this sequel is how Grant is answering a lot of questions people had about the first book, Feed, though when you're reading, you don't feel like she just stuck the answers in because she felt she had to. No, the answers read like they've always been part of the story. Want to learn more about the amplification and the Kellis-Amberlee virus? Check. We learn a lot, far more than I expected. Want to know what the deal really was between Shaun and George? Check. Did you feel like the villain in Feed was just a little too black-and-white obvious for your taste? Don't worry, you learn why.
I'm not saying you'll be satisfied with the answers Grant gives you, but I point this out because by way of construction, Grant's got my complete and total trust in her story-telling capability, and I firmly believe that she knows what she's doing with this story and why. I should note that this isn't a self-contained novel by any means: it's the middle book of a trilogy, which means it's imperative that you read Feed first, and that you won't get any real resolution to the overall scheme of things until the third book is over. And that's okay. Deadline ends at a great cliffhanger, and by time you get there, you may be like me and are so overwhelmed (in a good way) with everything that's happened that you need a break to process it all. The only downside is that for a break, I only needed an hour at most, but I have to wait until this time next year for the final installment, Blackout.
The point: whether you liked or loved Feed, I think Deadline more than delivers. But this is not a proper starting point, so run, don't walk, to get your hands on Feed, and then get back to me once you're caught up, okay? :)
Cover Commentary: I can't say that I've ever been a HUGE fan of these covers, but they are eye-catching, and I am fond of teal. Really, that's all I can say. :)
Next up: Embassytown by China Miéville