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starladyGrant, 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.
I've seen at least one review of Feed that alleged that it was, in essence, unfeminist and that George was fridged for manpain. While I'm aware that defenders of specific instances of manpain are always claiming that their particular media property isn't manpain because of x, y, and z, I don't think the allegations of manpain square with the fact that George narrated the first book until her death, and that apparently she'll be narrating at least half of the third book as well. Further, she earned her death, if I can put it that way, as a consequence of her own actions, as the ending of her own story.
And yes, George's death messes Shaun up something awful, but there's no particular sense in Deadline that Shaun's grief is unique and tragic and special. His response to it may be unique--he hallucinates that George is in his head talking to him, and sometimes visually hallucinates her as well--but is aware that he basically isn't sane and manages to keep it together to function anyway, which is…interesting. It's not quite an approach that I think I've seen before, and there's plenty of acknowledgment from Shaun that his response isn't normal or healthy, as he's constantly reminded by the people around him.
That said [rot13 for speculation for Blackout], V jbaqre jurgure Funha'f fhccbfrq unyyhpvangvba bs Trbetr vf npghnyyl fbzr fbeg bs gryrcnguvp yvax jvgu ure pybar, onfrq ba n fragrapr be gjb va gur pbqn gb guvf obbx.
I was also surprised that this book actually confirmed, if in a rather roundabout way, the (adoptive) sibling incest that the first book led me to strongly suspect. I was expecting Grant to keep that (barely) subtextual, or only barely textual (as one character's bisexuality in this book is; blink and you'll miss it), but I was surprised about that. Certainly this still means that Shaun and George's relationship is one of the more unusual sibling relationships I've seen in genre fiction. Given what the coda to Deadline reveals, I'll be interested to see the denouement of that particular thread in the next book.
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.
I've seen at least one review of Feed that alleged that it was, in essence, unfeminist and that George was fridged for manpain. While I'm aware that defenders of specific instances of manpain are always claiming that their particular media property isn't manpain because of x, y, and z, I don't think the allegations of manpain square with the fact that George narrated the first book until her death, and that apparently she'll be narrating at least half of the third book as well. Further, she earned her death, if I can put it that way, as a consequence of her own actions, as the ending of her own story.
And yes, George's death messes Shaun up something awful, but there's no particular sense in Deadline that Shaun's grief is unique and tragic and special. His response to it may be unique--he hallucinates that George is in his head talking to him, and sometimes visually hallucinates her as well--but is aware that he basically isn't sane and manages to keep it together to function anyway, which is…interesting. It's not quite an approach that I think I've seen before, and there's plenty of acknowledgment from Shaun that his response isn't normal or healthy, as he's constantly reminded by the people around him.
That said [rot13 for speculation for Blackout], V jbaqre jurgure Funha'f fhccbfrq unyyhpvangvba bs Trbetr vf npghnyyl fbzr fbeg bs gryrcnguvp yvax jvgu ure pybar, onfrq ba n fragrapr be gjb va gur pbqn gb guvf obbx.
I was also surprised that this book actually confirmed, if in a rather roundabout way, the (adoptive) sibling incest that the first book led me to strongly suspect. I was expecting Grant to keep that (barely) subtextual, or only barely textual (as one character's bisexuality in this book is; blink and you'll miss it), but I was surprised about that. Certainly this still means that Shaun and George's relationship is one of the more unusual sibling relationships I've seen in genre fiction. Given what the coda to Deadline reveals, I'll be interested to see the denouement of that particular thread in the next book.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-01 18:41 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-01 22:03 (UTC)And yeah, if true, it would be…odd. I mean, I suppose under the idea that "clone has same soul" which is apparently why cloning is forbidden to everyone about the CDC it sort of makes sense, but yeah.