Feed- Mira Grant

Feed by Mira Grant

2010, Orbit

Website/Amazon

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?

This book.

This book still has me all conflicted.

There are zombies in it, the first scene involved a high speed chase and a pack of ravenous flesh eaters. We meet the characters in a high stress situation. Suddenly there is politics involved. Lots of lengthy, pontificating politics. There is a smattering of exciting zombie bits thrown throughout, but a lot of the book involves the characters as they follow the Republican candidate on the campaign trail.

There’s conspiracies! There’s drama! This book gave me ALL THE FEELINGS. I couldn’t deal with one loss, and it threw another, more poignant one at me. I didn’t cry, but it was a close thing. There were also more needles than I would have liked. I found myself curling my toes with discomfort in my gut for a good chunk of pages.

The voice of this book was confusing. I’m used to books labeled Young Adult to read a certain way. This was challenging and engrossing, but it seemed like it would go over most of its target audience’s heads.

Oh, and by the way, it’s very precious that Shaun Mason, labeled an Irwin type of journalist, would make his password ‘crikey’. But! It’s supposed to be for top secret, super duper private files. That, is just too easy to guess.