Off The Shelf
Feed
by Mira Grant
Review by Larissa March
You got your zombies into my politics!
You got your politics into my zombies!
(It’s delicious, delicious!)
Ahem.
Slightly more seriously, Feed is the first book
from Mira Grant (actually the third to hit the shelves from Seanan
McGuire, who
needed a pseudonym to differentiate these books from her fantasy series
with
October Daye) and it’s a great start for a trilogy.
Georgia and Shaun
Mason (yeah, you know the names were
chosen on purpose) are beta level bloggers who just need the right
break to
step up to the big leagues and start their own site. An invitation to
embed
themselves in Senator Ryman’s presidential campaign is just
the ticket, until
the story turns into a scoop too hot to handle. Zombies have been a
fact of
life since the Kellis-Amberlee virus infected every mammal over 40
pounds
twenty years ago, causing the Rising, and now someone is trying to use
the
virus, and the zombies, for political assassination!
Mira’s world building is excellent, and she extrapolates the
post-virus society in gruesome detail. During the initial outbreak
bloggers,
with fewer editorial restraints and less to lose, were the main source
of news
and tips gleaned from George Romero movies on how to stay alive while
mainstream media dismissed reports of zombies and laughed, leading to a
huge
surge in respectability for bloggers. Since the virus is ubiquitous in
dormant
form, then death by any cause will bring on amplification and rising,
but of
course it’s not so simple. Spontaneous conversion can occur,
as can odd partial
conditions like Retinal K-A (a condition where the virus presents as
active in
the eyes, causing permanent dilation of the pupil). Naturally, a zombie
bite is
death but fear is so pervasive that blood tests are obsessively
repetitive
anywhere people may contact each other. A whole generation is growing
up with a
paranoia of groups of more than 15 and a strong inclination to stay
inside,
where it’s safe. Well, safer.
If
you want a simple, standard zombie story where you know
who’s going to live and who’s going to die, and
why, then this is not the book
for you. If you want a political potboiler without humor or surprises,
this is
not the book for you.
If
you want a vividly written science-fiction novel in a painstakingly
detailed dystopian world about strong, snarky characters who will make you care
desperately about them and keep you from putting the damn book down
when your
lunch break is over, well, then I can tell you from experience that
this is the
book for you.
Damn you, Mira. That was AWESOME.
Feed is published by Orbit Books. You can
find more information about Mira Grant at her website,
http://www.miragrant.com/
© 2010 by Larissa March
Larissa March is a New Englander who has been sucessfully
transplanted to Georgia, where she has put down roots with her husband, two
cats, and an improbable number of books.
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