Feed

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.

The antagonist wasn't really developed all that well. I like the book overall and enjoyed reading a zombie book with brains (pun intended), but I would have appreciated having a little more character development outside of George and Shaun. I think the author made the nemesis a political/religious stereotype with very little character insight.

I was so stressed out finishing this. It grabbed me from the get go. Great zombie novel, but with a little more...intelligence than some. Sometimes it felt like the narrator (Georgia) was TELLING me rather than SHOWING me, but other than that I didn't have many issues with the writing style. Found the political aspect somewhat familiar, minus the zombies, of course, and that may have been the scariest part to me. I'm not sure how I feel about the narrator, in first person, being killed at the end. I find that extremely jarring. But again, highly enjoyable zombie story.

I know I'm kinda a Seanan Mcguire fan girl, and hardly objective, but I thought this was ACE. Very smart post-apoc fiction.

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!

I'm primarily familiar with Mira Grant, a.k.a. Seanan McGuire, through her filk music and through the folks in the Pacific Northwest who know her. That was enough of a connection, though, to make me quite pleased to hear she was pursuing a writing career, and certainly I was pleased to see that as urban fantasies go, Rosemary and Rue stood out for me as better than normal in an overcrowded genre.

That was before I read Feed.

Now, granted, I'm a sucker for a good zombie novel. But what makes a truly kickass zombie novel is a plot that's much less about the zombies and much more about the world that a zombie outbreak creates, and Grant does this in spades in this book. I'm not sure what impressed me more, and there's a lot to impress here: the backstory of the Kellis-Amberlee virus; the various complex social and political changes that happen in America as a result of the Rising; the fact that in this world, George Romero is considered a national hero; or the upsurge of bloggers as a source of organized journalism. Either way, it makes me very much want to up the ante on my own writing efforts. Take note, my fellow writers. This is how worldbuilding is done.

And when you take impressive worldbuilding and throw in highly engaging characters on top of it, the result is riveting. I loved the two protagonists, Georgia and Shaun Mason, as well as the supporting crew surrounding them. I loved Buffy the support tech chick, who quips that she's blonde and cute and hunts zombies, what else should she name herself? I loved Rick, who signs on with Georgia and Shaun after working for actual newspapers. I even loved Senator Ryman, a halfway decent politician.

Quotes from the various major characters' individual blogs add a lot of lovely atmosphere to the book. Be sure to read them in depth, too. There's lots of detail you don't want to miss, and the blog excerpts are of critical importance in the climactic end of the book.

Watch out for that climax, too, because it'll totally make you tear up. Or, aheh, so I've heard. ^_^;; Five stars. Because I mean, DAMN.