Feed

3.5 stars, but I detract a half star for the narrator.

This book is in this day and age a lot more relevant and difficult to read than it must have been when it came out in... 2011 I believe?
Going through a viral pandemic was, in that time, something far away from reality. Today it isn't.

We don't have zombies, thank goodness. The way people actually behave during a pandemic would have meant mankind would have been extinct within a year. But we have the Corona-virus.
When this book was written, social media weren't the thing they are now, but blogging was hot. But replace blogs with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and you have the world of today, where the news isn't only in the hands of the traditional journalists, but also in the hand of online influencers, and the common man/woman/whatever.
It's a different world, and yet, frightfully the same.
There was this presidential campaign during a world-wide pandemic. A campaign the went on like everything was normal, while putting supporters at risk.

Well... this book wasn't easy to read.
Especially the conspiracy angle. I want to stay far away from conspiracy theories about the current situation, and reading this book, I understand how the media fuel and stoke the ideas in people that things like that have to be conspiracies. I understand why writers do this. But I can see every day around me how dangerous that can be.
Still... back to the book.

This was Seanan McGuire in excellent form. Not her best, but quite good. It floated a bit more on the Incryptid side than on the October Day. All her standard themes and motives are in this book. She really has a problem with her parents, doesn't she? Or so one would guess after reading most of her series.
While reading, I found that my brain tried to keep fitting puzzle pieces to the other series elements, and it was distracting. While she uses the same elements over and over (and the same names), she does manage to vary the elements enough to keep them separate. So while she clearly has a problem with authority (fatherly) figures, there are small changes that keep it interesting.

It reminded me the most of the Incryptid Werewolf book: the incredibly contagious virus, transmitted with a bite or bodily fluid. Shaun was some kind of Alex. The werewolf explanation sounded even the same. And yet, it is different. Well, for one, this wasn't in Australia :-) (then again, there were Irwins, so... ;-) )

While I really appreciated the acknowledgements, mentioning the massive amount of work and help she got with the work of getting all the facts and science straight, I was miffed about the shoddy work on the tech-side. But still... kuddoos for puting in the research!

The end of this book hit like a bullet to the frontal lobe. Now there was a twist I didn't see coming. That's great as well!

I like how she kept the language of this book (she does this in all her series) to a theme. "Feed" is about biting, chewing, puncturing, devouring, and those are the words she uses for the needles in the tests. The story is pulpy enough to almost forget what a lovely word-crafter she actually is.
I really enjoy how she manages to create very different series (in tone, setting). That's a skill not many writers posses.

Narration was... OK, I guess. I didn't like the narrator's accent. It was a drawl (a bit). Not pleasant to listen to (for me). The male narrator at the end had a problem with accents and speed-control. I hope that gets better in the next book.

I'll be continuing to the second part of the series.

Wow, I really didn't like this book.

The premise is great. The world is overrun by zombies. Has been for decades. People live in high-security cities. Everyone is paranoid about outbreaks. Our heroes are not soldiers or secret agents or detectives or scientists. They are bloggers. They are not uncovering the big secret behind the zombie plague or how it can be reversed or an alien invasion or anything "usual" like that. They are covering an election. So cool!

I especially like the scientific explanation and mechanics for the zombies. A protection for the common cold and a cure for cancer combined in unforeseen ways. Everyone is infected! Nobody gets cancer or the common cold. But when anyone dies, the virus activates and they become a zombie. You don't need to be bitten. Have a heart attack and come back a zombie! Of course any contact with the activated virus also activates your infection. If you get bitten, you become a zombie without needing to die first. This is fantastic!

Great ideas. But the execution really fell flat for me.

I think we don't usually get SFF books about bloggers and political campaigns because it's hard to find what makes these people and events exciting. I'm sure they are as exciting for the people living it as debugging a fascinating bug is for me (a programmer). But someone on the outside would have a hard time relaying that excitement. Unfortunately the book felt like someone who has never been close to a newsroom or a campaign trying to do this. "Quick, we have to publish this article!" "Look at the reader numbers!" "We are polling 1% higher now!" This layperson's impression of the world of news and politics is absolutely not enough to sustain a book even if you throw in zombies.

Due to this the book is boring. I read it very slowly. I'm okay with leaving books unfinished, but a zombie book two-thirds through? How could that be boring? I powered through, but it was boring.

The writing is just bad. "Poke/prod a zombie with a stick" is found on pages 9, 10, 108, 183, 280, 300, 324, and 452. I'm not counting the cases where someone actually prods a zombie with a stick. It's just the times when the recklessness/bravery of someone (Shaun) is light-heartedly described. I had too much of this joke on page 10. By page 452 I cannot imagine any reader chuckling along.

Another extremely repetitive scene is the blood test. You get tested when you enter an elevator. You get tested when you leave the elevator. There are very expensive single-use test units. But why?! The virus acts in a few minutes. The tests take a few minutes. A zombie cannot blend in with humans. It seems like you could just hold people up for a few minutes without a test and just see if they turn. I should have counted the number of blood tests described in the book. Maybe a hundred? None of them reveal anything unexpected!

The character interactions are nonsensical. Most importantly the interview with Tate, a presidential candidate. Georgia (the hero) acts a bit silly arriving intentionally 10 minutes late, because she thinks the chief of staff would make her wait 30 minutes otherwise. There is no chief of staff though, she just enters Tate's office directly. Tate doesn't make a big deal out of her being late, but she feels pretty smug about how her plan worked. (?) Then they discuss some policy questions like whether or not you can breed horses. (All large mammals are infected and become zombies on death.)

After that interview, they hate each other. It seems like the author wanted to write a scene where Georgia outsmarts Tate and produces an embarrassing interview. Tate holds a grudge for this. But there was nothing embarrassing in the interview. I've re-read it now. Seriously there's nothing.
Tate's unexplained grudge holds throughout the story and he is revealed at the end to be a cartoon villain serial killer.

Another example. Our heroes have just found a data stick hidden by a dead character.

"The plot thickes," I said. "Shaun, Becks used to be a Newsie. How's she with computers?"
"Not as good as Buffy-"
"No one's as good as Buffy."
"But she's good."
"Good enough?"
"One one way to find out." He held out his hand. I gave him the data stick without a moment's hesitation. The day I couldn't trust Shaun, it was over. Simple as that.

2040, futur proche, vingt-six ans après le Jour des morts qui a vu une épidémie infecter le monde entier. L’univers imaginé par Mira Grant est dominé par une peur et une méfiance permanentes, et le quotidien de chacun repose sur une paranoïa qui semble ne pas avoir de limite. Le virus est omniprésent, des attaques de zombies et des flambées épidémiques peuvent survenir à tout moment, et une vigilance de tous les instants est de rigueur. Les zombies sont ici prétexte à un thriller politico-médical, et l’information en est le thème central. Internet, ou plus précisément la blogosphère d’info, est devenue LA référence pour qui recherche la vérité. Le journalisme vu par Mira Grant est très organisé, il comporte différents types de journalistes : les rédacs, dédiés au rédactionnel et à l’info pure et dure, les irwins, reporters casse-coups croisés entre Indiana Jones et Daryl Dixon, et enfin les bardes, auteurs de fiction et de poésie.
[lire la suite]

I started this book last week and finished it last week. It took a few days (commutes, evenings, and even sneaking time at work) to read the nearly 600 pages.

Basically, all the negatives are nitpicking, which means this is a good book.

I'm not actually a fan of zombie culture. My husband is. We've watched all the zombie movies. But I would have passed on them if I'd been involved with anybody that was not into zombie culture.

I don't typically read zombie books. I tried to read the Max Brooks books, but they drove me nuts, so they went into my very small "can't be finished" pile. Quite frankly, I've hate-read books before, so for me not to be able to finish a book means it's got problems.

But, anyway, back to Feed. I can say, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Grant knows her zombie culture. All the post-apocalypse kids names were call-backs to zombie movies. Some are directly addressed - George and feminine derivatives of the name being named after George Romero, a hero because of his movies. Some are not. I'm pretty sure Shaun is named from Shaun of the Dead. There are even ones that would be kids named before the apocalypse - Rick for one. I tend to think even that one is a zombie culture name, after Rick Grimes from Walking Dead.

Narrated in first person, you get the viewpoints of other characters through reading their blog entries at the beginning of chapters. It's a good way to get different perspective when writing in the first person. Grant strove very hard for consistency. And she was writing in 2010, so overlooking things that happened between when she wrote, and the summer of the apocalypse are not things I can hold her accountable for.

However, zombie culture was bigger in 2014 than in 2010 - much of which can be attributed to AMC's Walking Dead. Grant could not have predicted the success of that show after only 1 season.

While in 2010, blogging was frowned upon and "traditional" news media was trying to survive in the new online culture and was struggling, I think Grant oversold the dichotomy.

And, of course, I'm offended that her typing of pre-Rising (as she calls it) blogging completely missed science bloggers. They didn't fit into anything she described. Although post-rising, science bloggers may have become some sort of Newsy/Irwin depending on their own personalities.

So, all that aside, again it was just nitpicking. My main irritation was that I came across these books through GeekGirlCon. Seanan McGuire wrote a book I read because of its association with GeekGirlCon back in 2011. I liked her writing, so I put a bunch more of her writing on my wishlist. She was supposed to through misogyny and sexism out of the book. Yet, there were still some sexists tropes and some inherent sexism in the book that rubbed at me, expecting her to have worked around them.

All those things I thought as I read the first 500 or so pages. (Not constantly. The writing is good, the story is good, the characters are good.) And then I read the end. The end is such a tear-jerker and a surprise to me, that I almost was tempted to not write about the things that bugged me in the book. The last 75 pages are that great.

I've got Deadline and Blackout because a friend was so kind to get me a box set trilogy. I'm off to read Deadline. (Truth be told, I already started it.)

The premise was good, but... I found the novel to be somewhat tedious.

Feed follows a group of young Bloggers who are chosen to follow a US senator around on his campaign trail as he runs for President during a time when Zombies exist.

The characters were interesting, but the politics involved were quite boring. I'm not sure if that is because I am not American, or if the process really is all that dull but I could have forgiven that if it was not the primary focus of the novel. Added to this, was the repetitiveness of the story. It could probably be summed up as: Everyone gets a blood test, mention of George's eye condition, another blood test, buffy's tech expertise, another blood test, mention of ratings, mention of George's eye condition, another blood test. Then, Everyone gets a blood test, mention of George's eye condition, another blood test, buffy's tech expertise, another blood test, mention of ratings, mention of George's eye condition, another blood test. Rinse and Repeat.

By the time I was half way through I was struggling to make it through each chapter, and I felt like if they mentioned George's eye condition, or went through yet another blood test I might have to scream. The blood tests are necessary of course, but I don't feel like we needed to have the entire process (and sometime's history) of getting tested explained to us every single time they needed to have one. The same with George's eye condition. Every second chapter, it was George putting in contacts, putting on her sunglasses, turning the lights down, getting questioned over it.

Feed could have been an interesting story of the world as we dealt with life post viral outbreak, but instead just left me feeling bored.

This is a fun book which I enjoyed while reading and which afterward presented all kinds of problems for me.

The good: The basic scenario is the good old 'the world ended, we kept on going' which is always a good time. Add to that, the narrative voice is strong, distinctive, and fairly likeable. Bonus: our heroine, George, runs a news site that includes paid RPF writers, because that's just how the future rolls, and these writers are basically my people.

The bad: This book really had so much potential that it didn't live up to. Either it was super-subtle, or it really failed to go anywhere with the zombies/consumerism angle. And the book is named "Feed!" And all about news, which, you know, 24 hour news channels, I really think there's an angle! But from the book's point of view, news is more of a sacred calling than a commodity, and the consumers of it are invisible, or at least visible only as site statistics.

I'm not saying zombies have to be a metaphor for consumerism, but if your story has a snake and an apple, people are going to have expectations, which you should either subvert or fulfill.

Secondly, there's all kinds of things about this future which were just not believable to me. (Not the zombies. Obviously. Everyone believes in zombies.)

(Lightreads, in her review, says she had troubles believing it because of the inaccurate portrayal of presidential primaries. This was not a problem for me, since I assume presidential primaries are conducted basically like a concert tour: everyone gets in a bus and then drives around America to stop and scream at the locals from a podium.)

But, thing one: if everyone is a carrier for zombism which activates on body-fluid contact with the active virus, or upon death, then I just don't see the future looking like this. In the book, the death penalty is much less popular, since turning murderer into a murderous biohazard isn't really a savings. But surely we can just decapitate our murderers and be fine?

(Although I guess you could argue that the zombism would make prison safer: no sense sticking a shiv in someone if you knew you might be starting a plague and you'd be locked in with the vector.)

In fact, and, you know, I'm not arguing that this is a moral course of action, but surely there would be buckets of euthanasia for the terminally ill, and elderly? I mean, if someone might, at any time, turn into a murderous biohazard, why not gas them, decapitate them, and burn the bodies on your own schedule?

A big part of the book is also the fact that any animal over 40 pounds can (and will, upon death!) become a zombie, and then go searching for protein sources to eat/infect. This is a political hot-button: should people be allowed to keep large animals for pets? Surely they are much too dangerous!

Except, I honestly don't believe that any species that has not evolved siege warfare tactics has much of a chance, vis-a-vis zombies. Surely the first caribou to die and zombify would quickly infect the whole herd, and even if this did not occur, every caribou that dies is going to give it their best shot. Rinse and repeat for every critter over forty pounds, which, by the way, is a lot of them.

I mean, I'm personally glad to see thoroughbred horses have made it, but I'm a little skeptical any species that is not both protected by humans and traditionally reared in isolated stalls would have much of a chance.

Finally, and leaving for a moment, the realm of theoretical zombie epidemiology, I cannot believe that the books' protagonists would be anything like this sane. Georgia and Sean Mason are adopted by their parents as a publicity stunt, and have known this most of their lives. Adopted kids have a rough enough time when they know their parents love them; I cannot believe these two would not be far more fucked up than they are. (Which is moderately; they have quasi-incestuous vibe that skirts the edge of plausible deniability.) But really, they're basically stable kids with a strong set of values, which, no. I've seen what happens to the children of celebrities when they're not adopted, and have no reason to doubt their parents love them.

That said, a good book, and I will be on the look-out for sequels! Which is probably not at all the impression my review gives.

Wow! I didn't pick this up right away, because I'm not a horror or zombie fan. I finally did after seeing all the raves. It's a wild rollercoaster ride. While there's plenty of fighting zombies, I didn't feel like there was gore for gore's sake. [return][return]She creates a fascinating world that has figured out how to live with a horrific 'chronic condition': the dead walk, and attack people. People have adapted, putting defenses and double-checks into place. Everything changes, and she's thought through all the likely adaptations, and they hold together in a logical way. I stepped into suspension of disbelief, and never fell out due to a blooper. I do question the apparent level of prosperity, since all that security is expensive, but that's a tiny quibble.[return][return]The heroes are young bloggers, and they're adorable, in a Kevlar-armored, gun-toting way. They are also very, very smart. This is definitely competence-porn, which is high praise to me. I adore Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigans being both brave and supremely competent, and I liked Georgie and Shaun doing the same thing. But damn, I have to wait until May 2011 for the sequel!