Readalong: Feed by Mira Grant, Books III-IV & Final Review

Feed by Mira Grant

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the second installment of my feedback on a book chosen for this month's readalong by my friend Grace. Feed is the first novel in a trilogy about a team of bloggers tasked with reporting the news in a zombie post-apocalyptic world trying to rebuild. There's lots of sabotage, some deliciously gory zombie scenes, and even some awkward family tension.

There is a major spoiler several paragraphs down. Consider yourself warned.

I take back all my complaints about the drawn-out, sluggish first portion of the novel, which you can read here. Okay, so I can’t take them back, because that still stands, but the amount of action, character development, and tugging of heartstrings thereafter completely makes up for the previously declared lack.

I’m really hoping Steve plays a bigger role in the next two books in the trilogy. Grant doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time fleshing out his character (nice word choice, right?), but I just have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of him. He’s been through so much in this book with his security detail partners, and a great asset to Shaun and the After the End Times team.


***MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT.***


I don’t know that I can really put into words how much George’s death shook me. I really identified with her, and I can’t remember the last time I felt so in tune with a character in a book. The way she died was so incredibly painful and awful to read, but I felt it was flawlessly written, and in my case, got the desired reaction, I imagine. The notes at the end of the novel mention that Grant said she “cried like a baby” after she wrote that scene, as well, and reading that made me feel a little better, knowing that it affected her so deeply as well.

Overall, I'm really glad I gave this book a chance and am excited to read the next two in the trilogy- though likely not until I make a dent in these stacks of other books.

View all my reviews

See Jennifer's review here: Book Den
See Grace's review here: Feeding My Book Addiction

Readalong: Feed by Mira Grant, Books I-II

Grace at Feeding My Book Addiction is doing another readalong this month-a horror novel to offset the sappy mush that is Valentine's Day.

From miragrant.com: In 2014, two experimental viruses—a genetically engineered flu strain designed by Dr. Alexander Kellis, intended to act as a cure for the common cold, and a cancer-killing strain of Marburg, known as "Marburg Amberlee"—escaped the lab and combined to form a single airborne pathogen that swept around the world in a matter of days. It cured cancer. It stopped a thousand cold and flu viruses in their tracks.

It raised the dead.

Millions died in the chaos that followed. The summer of 2014 was dubbed "The Rising," and only the lessons learned from a thousand zombie movies allowed mankind to survive. Even then, the world was changed forever. The mainstream media fell, Internet news acquired an undeniable new legitimacy, and the CDC rose to a new level of power.

Set twenty years after the Rising, the Newsflesh trilogy follows a team of bloggers, led by Georgia and Shaun Mason, as they search for the brutal truths behind the infection. Danger, deceit, and betrayal lurk around every corner, as does the hardest question of them all:

When will you rise?

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Warning: Spoilers!

I was exceptionally excited to read this book, as I am a huge fan of anything zombie--books, video games, internet memes, pretending to be one to scare my co-workers. This first installment in the Newsflesh trilogy has been a little disappointing so far. The information dump necessary to set the scene seemed a little bland and dry, but I will say I'm exceptionally intrigued by Georgia's brusqueness and Shaun's laissez-faire attitude. Buffy's character fades into the background for me. Perhaps this is intentional, and in the second half of the book she is the unexpected heroine. Grant's nod to zombie culture icons like George A. Romero, arguably the "father" of zombie apocalypse movies definitely put a smile on my face, and I love to hate the Masons, Georgia and Shaun's adoptive parents. The amount of "affection" shown by the parents directly correlates to the foreseeable increase in ratings that the parents can obtain with public displays of family togetherness. Not quite Toddlers & Tiaras-bad, but still...

I think (hope) the second half of the novel will be much better than the first, and the two subsequent novels will only improve the story line. I can't wait to find out who's behind the sabotage attempts on Senator Ryman's presidential campaign. The obvious answer would be David Tate, but that seems too predictable, and Grant has definitely surprised me already with some of the plot twists. It was very difficult to stop reading after the second book when the news is revealed to Georgia and the reader about the outbreak at the Ryman horse ranch.

Grant also subtly works in some moral dilemmas, such as the hotly-debated Mason's Law. I definitely found myself thinking about which side I would support. I definitely am a bleeding heart, especially when it comes to animals, but the constant unknown having large animals around all the time would be incredibly nerve-wracking. Which side do you think you'd support?

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Other Posts:

Alice @ Tales of an Intrepid Pantster

Grace @ Feeding My Book Addiction

Jennifer @ The Book Den