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Grant, Mira. Deadline. New York: Orbit Books, 2011.
Disclaimer: I know the author.
I read and enjoyed Feed, the first book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy which was nominated for a Hugo Award, earlier this summer. My subconscious would like you to know that it is both very difficult and very dangerous to run away from boarding school in this world, as I had a dream Monday morning in which I apparently succeeded in running away from boarding school but promptly realized that I had now greatly increased my risk of turning into a zombie. And then I woke myself up because things were getting freaky.
So, Deadline. There's not much I can say about this book without spoilers, but here's my attempt: this book follows Shaun Mason and his attempts to deal with the ramifications of the events in Feed, about a year and a half after the end of that book. It will surprise no one, methinks, that the truths Georgia and Shaun uncovered in Feed were only the tip of the iceberg, and in the meantime, the Kellis-Amberlee virus is also doing what viruses do best, i.e. mutating.
I enjoyed this book; I enjoyed the first one, and and the strengths of Feed have carried over into Deadline, namely sympathetic characters, page-turning suspense, and a strong background in virology and epidemiology and weapons know-how that never infodumps. Having gone through my own obsession with disease and pandemics (what I learned doing research in high school about the influenza pandemic of 1918 has led me to get a flu shot every year for the past decade), I think Grant has a real flair for bringing a society besieged by a virus to life. At the same time, her projection of what society and blogging will look like in thirty years, after thirty years of potential zombie apocalypse, are believable and interesting too.
( Spoilers undergo amplification, though not for the ending )
I enjoy Grant | McGuire books, not least because just about everyone in them is snarky, sarcastic, jaded, and funny, and that hasn't changed. I very much will be reading Blackout next year.
Disclaimer: I know the author.
I read and enjoyed Feed, the first book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy which was nominated for a Hugo Award, earlier this summer. My subconscious would like you to know that it is both very difficult and very dangerous to run away from boarding school in this world, as I had a dream Monday morning in which I apparently succeeded in running away from boarding school but promptly realized that I had now greatly increased my risk of turning into a zombie. And then I woke myself up because things were getting freaky.
So, Deadline. There's not much I can say about this book without spoilers, but here's my attempt: this book follows Shaun Mason and his attempts to deal with the ramifications of the events in Feed, about a year and a half after the end of that book. It will surprise no one, methinks, that the truths Georgia and Shaun uncovered in Feed were only the tip of the iceberg, and in the meantime, the Kellis-Amberlee virus is also doing what viruses do best, i.e. mutating.
I enjoyed this book; I enjoyed the first one, and and the strengths of Feed have carried over into Deadline, namely sympathetic characters, page-turning suspense, and a strong background in virology and epidemiology and weapons know-how that never infodumps. Having gone through my own obsession with disease and pandemics (what I learned doing research in high school about the influenza pandemic of 1918 has led me to get a flu shot every year for the past decade), I think Grant has a real flair for bringing a society besieged by a virus to life. At the same time, her projection of what society and blogging will look like in thirty years, after thirty years of potential zombie apocalypse, are believable and interesting too.
( Spoilers undergo amplification, though not for the ending )
I enjoy Grant | McGuire books, not least because just about everyone in them is snarky, sarcastic, jaded, and funny, and that hasn't changed. I very much will be reading Blackout next year.