It had a promising start with the outbreak of a disease known as Dragonscale which first manifests as dark marksWell, that was a spoonful of nonsense.
It had a promising start with the outbreak of a disease known as Dragonscale which first manifests as dark marks on the skin. Getting a free tribal tattoo might not sound that bad, but the real problem is that eventually infected people burst into flames and burn to death. The damage caused by walking blowtorches and the fear of being infected have society teetering on the brink of collapse.
Harper is a young nurse who discovers that she has contracted Dragonscale and she’s pregnant. If that isn’t bad enough her jerk-face husband Jakob goes coocoo for Coco-Puffs and thinks they should just kill themselves. During a desperate moment Harper finds help in the form of a mysterious guy dressed as a fireman who leads her to a hidden community of infected people who have found a way to survive the disease. Unfortunately, discord within that group proves as dangerous as the vigilante Cremation Squads that have started murdering the infected.
It’s a strong premise, but unfortunately there’s a number of factors that drag it down. First and foremost is that it’s way too long. Hill can’t seem to commit to one main story, and he keeps adding on to it like a late-night TV commercial promising, “But that’s not all!” This causes a lot of drift with a long swath of the book not even touching on what’s going on in the outside world and forgetting what should be major characters for long periods of time. It’s also like one of those action movies that never seems to know when to end that goes on 20 minutes past the point where it should have wrapped things up.
I also wasn’t a fan of Harper, and since this whole story is built on the idea of a plucky heroine trying to survive a civilization ending plague then I needed to have at least have some respect for her. Unfortunately, she comes across as twit who never seems to wise up until something terrible happens. Which it does. Repeatedly. I lost count of the number of times where she is shocked by the bad intentions of someone and says things like, “You can’t!” It’s the apocalype, lady. They can, and they will. Her infatuation with Mary Poppins, and Hill’s constant use of it and its songs are also way overdone.
In fact, there’s just too much goddamn music in this book overall with constant quoting of lyrics and talking about various musicians. It's a crutch Hill leans on far too often. Plus, it’s all Jurassic Rock with a smattering of ‘80s pop in there with even an old VJ from MTV having a role to play. It’s 2016, Joe Hill. I don’t need your main character, who is supposedly in her early twenties, lecturing me on what the preference for the Rolling Stones or the Beatles says about a person.
Another piece that flies off this jalopy of a book once it gets up to speed is the nature of the disease itself. There’s a lot of effort spent to convince us that there is a rational scientific reason that people would turn into Zippos, and I can suspend disbelief enough to go with that concept. But when more and more is added to the point where we’re into ideas like people being able to generate and control fire without their clothes burning and even more weirdness then you don’t need Neal deGrasse Tyson to call bullshit on it. Just as he couldn’t seem to commit to one story or another Hill can’t seem to decide if he wanted a more grounded concept with some science behind it or if he wanted to jump full-on into the supernatural pool.
Hill also opted to run home to Daddy in this because the entire book is absolutely rotten with Easter eggs of Stephen King’s work. A few references can be fun, but when Hill essentially ‘borrows’ a character from The Stand including a cute little name trick to underline it then it’s crossed the line. (Harold Cross? For a character who is essentially Harold Lauder? That's weak.*) After a while it started to seem desperate, as if Hill knew things weren’t going well and hoped he might use fan familiarity of his father's books to invoke some of his magic. Hill also seems to have inherited his father’s trait of having a bunch of characters claim that they’re are critically short of time only to have them waste most of it with idle chit-chat and banter that is supposed to be funny and make you like the characters. It’s not, and it doesn’t.
So at this point Hill is 2 for 4 with me, and after this I’m going to need a really good reason to pick up his next one.
* And I didn't think about this until I read Edward Lorn's review where he pointed out that there's also a deaf character named Nick. Come on, Joe Hill. You're better than that....more
I’ve had a long-standing policy that I will not read an unfinished sci-fi/fantasy series because I spent ovI got nobody to blame but myself for this….
I’ve had a long-standing policy that I will not read an unfinished sci-fi/fantasy series because I spent over a decade waiting for a certain master of horror to get off his ass and finish what he started. Plus, I have no urge to join the ranks of fans of other fantasy writers who seem to spend more time coming up with excuses and side projects rather than producing new books to finish their on-going series.
Ignorance isn’t a good defense, but it’s all I can claim. I picked this up on a whim after hearing it mentioned on the Incomparable podcast. I was a little leery when I saw it was almost 600 pages, but I didn’t bother looking into exactly what I had gotten myself into until I started the book That’s when I freaked the hell out:
“9 novels?!? 9 goddamn novels and they’re all this long? Holy shit! Only 5 have been released? It’s an unfinished series?? IT’S AN UNFINISHED SERIES! Oh, sweet jebus what have I done? And holy shit snacks they’ve been releasing off-shoot novels! ARGGHHH!! This is a nightmare…. OK, calm down. Let’s see, there’s actually two guys writing it under one pen name. Two guys can keep each other focused and moving forward. They’ve been releasing books like clockwork and have a schedule to bring it home. That’s good news. And these off-shoots are Kindle shorts so it looks like they’re really just true extras and not them filling their pockets while dawdling on the main series. Oh, and the Syfy network is doing a TV series based on it? That could be cool. Maybe this isn’t so bad after all. Wait, one of the authors also works as an assistant to….Uh oh. Well, maybe he’s learned what NOT to do when you’re working on a series…Or maybe I‘ll end up not liking it very much and can just stop here.”
No such luck. Damn it. I’m a sucker for the kind of sci-fi where even though they’re in space the characters have dirt under their nails and skinned knuckles rather than lounging around in pristine uniforms on ships that look like corporate cube farms. I’m also much more of a believer in the idea that if humanity does make it to other worlds that we’ll be dragging all our collective baggage out there with us rather than being explorers from a utopian society. Plus, I’m a big mystery fan and one of the main characters is a burned out space detective with a cynical outlook. And I also like (view spoiler)[zombie stories. So when it’s alien vomit zombies? (hide spoiler)] Oh, yeah. I’m in.
I particularly liked the push/pull between the two main characters. Holden is an idealist who thinks that people will make good collective choices as long as they’re told the truth, and that contrasts well with Miller’s bleak outlook that people are stupid sheep. Put those two guys in a society built out among our solar system’s asteroid belt that is about to go to war with Earth and Mars as they try to unravel the conspiracy behind it, and you’ve got yourself a pretty damn compelling sci-fi story.
I still kinda feel like a rube though….
Update 2/7/17 - You can tell from the original review I posted that I had a lot of misgivings about starting an unfinished series back when I first read this. A few years later after re-reading it I'm happy to report that it all worked out for the best. The authors have stuck to their schedule and delivered a book a year since they started, and the entires series has become one of my favorite sci-fi things ever. I also got a bonus in a pretty damn good TV series based on the show since then which just started it's second season. So this gamble has paid off pretty well so far. ...more
(I received an ARC of this from NetGalley for this review.)
The whole time I was reading this I had to fight the urge to walk around imitating Christop(I received an ARC of this from NetGalley for this review.)
The whole time I was reading this I had to fight the urge to walk around imitating Christopher Walken from that famous Saturday Night Live skit. “I got a FEVER and the only prescription is more Megan Abbott!”
Sorry. I had to get that out of my system….
Deenie Nash is a pretty typical American teenage girl. She lives with her school teacher father Tom and her brother Eli. After her best friend Lise has a seizure in class followed by more girls becoming violently ill, a wave of hysteria rises which makes all of them examine what they thought they knew about the people around them.
Megan Abbott showed her impressive noir chops in great books like The Song Is You and Queenpin, and in her more recent work (Dare Me) she’s been illustrating how the inner lives and social circles of teenage girls can be a darker and scarier topic than mob-owned night clubs or the seamier side of Hollywood. She’s outdone herself in The Fever by starting with a simple premise of a mysterious illness causing panic, and then using it to touch the variety of things that would come up in any teenage girl’s life. When Deenie is jealous of her friend Gabbie’s new relationship with the odd Skye or struggling to understand her adolescent sexual urges or angry at her mother for leaving her father it makes adult reader remember the confused emotionality that goes along with teenagers.
What impressed me even more than her ability to put us inside the head of a teenage girl was how Ms. Abbott also nails the male side of the equation. Tom is a single dad trying to do his best for his kids but still constantly feels like he’s failing them in one way or another. Eli is a handsome hockey star who is bewildered by the attention he gets from girls, but that doesn’t stop him from occasionally hooking up with one of them. Tom and Eli often regard Deenie and her friends as mysterious creatures best observed from some distance.
Another terrific aspect is how authentic the reaction of the community is portrayed. Parents embracing conspiracy theories based on no evidence and pointing fingers at school administrators and government health workers is exactly the kind of irrational and panic-stricken total bat-shit freak-out that would occur.
Mystery illness, paranoia, teenage angst, high school politics, sex, divorce, environmental issues, social media gossip…… This book has something for everyone and proves once again that if you aren’t reading Megan Abbott, you should be.
Here’s a book called Blackout that seems hugely popular with critics and the Goodreads crowd, but that I thought had serious flaws despite a cool premHere’s a book called Blackout that seems hugely popular with critics and the Goodreads crowd, but that I thought had serious flaws despite a cool premise. Now I’ve written a long review going in depth into what irritated me so much. Hmm… I wonder why I’ve got this odd feeling of deja vu?
This is the third book in the Newsflesh trilogy after Feed and Deadline in which Mira Grant* created a future world set about twenty-five years after mutated viruses created zombies. In this future, where dying by any means causes the dormant virus to go active and turn any corpse into a potential brain eater, large parts of the world have been ceded to the undead while the so-called safe zones are made up of fortified locations and rigid security measures.
* A pen name for Seanan McGuire.
Bloggers have become the most trusted source of news since traditional media did nothing to inform people about the danger or what to do during the initial zombie uprising. The story revolves around some of these on-line journalists who got thrown in the middle of a vast political conspiracy that has cost them dearly.
To find an example of one of my biggest problems with these books I need to look no further than the zombie bear in this one. In Grant’s version of the future, the large mammals like horses, cows and bigger dogs can also turn into zombies, and we get the potential for an awesome scene when a couple of the main characters run across a zombie bear while traveling, and they have no choice but to take it down. If you’re the kind of person who has dedicated a significant amount of time to reading over 1700 total pages of a zombie story, the idea of a fight with a zombie bear should fill you with glee and anticipation.
What Grant does is some foreshadowing about the appearance of a zombie bear, then has the zombie bear show and get two characters all revved up to fight it. They grab their guns and jump out of their vehicle to take on this goddamn zombie bear, and then……
She cuts to the next chapter where something else is going on. Later on we get a brief blog post from one of the characters saying that he killed a zombie bear and it was fun.
This incident makes me pretty sure that Mira Grant isn’t from Missouri. You know, the SHOW-ME STATE. If there was one of the fifty that was a I'LL-STRONGLY-HINT-THAT-SOMETHING-AWESOME-IS-ABOUT-TO-HAPPEN-REPEATEDLY-BUT-NEVER-QUITE-PAY-IT-OFF STATE, that’s where Mira Grant would be from. (But that motto would probably be tough to fit on a license plate.)
I gotta a lot of other problems with this book and the entire trilogy. In order to maximize my bitching, I’ve broken them into these categories that are spoiler free:
The Grant Repetition Principle - Apparently Mira Grant thinks all of her readers have the same condition as Guy Pierce in Memento and that none of us are capable of producing short term memories because she repeats shit constantly to either remind us of things or reuse the same plot points, scenes or dialogue over and over again. If the Internet hasn’t completely devastated your attention span, this gets annoying in a hurry. This repetition causes the other issues I had with the book to become even more irritating because if she does something that annoys you once, you can bet it’s going to happen about fifty more times over the course of the three books.
Mira Grant Wants To Suck Your Blood! - If I had a nickel for every blood screening that happens in these books, I could make Bill Gates my pool boy. Yes, this is a society locked down and living in fear because of a virus, but that doesn’t mean that the details of all those tests have to be repeated. Even worse is that Grant gets stuck on certain phrases and descriptions. The subject almost always “Slaps my palm on the panel.” and then they wince as “The needles bit into my skin.”
First off, if it’s a blood test with needles, why would you ‘Slap my palm on the panel’? Why not “Place my palm gently on the panel.”?
Secondly, I’ve got a cat with diabetes who has required two injections of insulin a day for five years or so. That means I’ve injected him over 3600 times. In all of those, I have never once ‘bit’ him with a needle. I’ve ‘jabbed’ him with a needle. I’ve ‘poked’ him with a needle. I’ve ‘pierced’ him with a needle. I’ve ‘stung’ him with a needle. But no ‘biting’.
It’s called a thesaurus, Mira. Look into it. Or better yet, just cut down on the blood tests.
Have A Coke And A Smile - I’m pretty sure that Coca-Cola must have paid some kind of product placement fee because there’s no other way to figure out why it seems like someone is drinking one on every other page. Since Mira is also assuming that none of us can remember what a Coke tastes like, she lets us know how sweet it is every time.
Particularly bad was this exchange on page 511 which I think is Coke # 2465 in this book:
“How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted. I need a Coke.”
I was never going to get tired of hearing those words.
That’s when I realized that Mira Grant has got to be fucking with us.
Where Are All The Zombies? And What Do They Look Like? - Blackout has 632 pages. Of this, only about 40 actually feature any kind of encounters with zombies. That’s about 6% of the book, and that ratio is about the same for the other two. And whenever zombies do show up, there is an almost complete lack of description of them. They are just ‘zombies’. No mention of age, gender, clothing, state of decay or anything else. I know that giving detailed descriptions of zombie hordes would be impossible, but if you don’t describe at least a few of them, then it’s just this nebulous vague threat.
Maybe if we could have had a few less blood tests and Cokes, there would have been time for some more zombie fightin’ action and maybe a couple of descriptions to let us know what they looked like.
Are You Threatening Me? - Our heroes love to threaten people. They threaten both their enemies and friends constantly. Following the Grant Repetition Principle, most of these threats are pretty similar. Someone is always A) Going to get shot. Or B) Going to be punched in the face.
These threats are doled out in conversation and in the blog posts that lead off every chapters, but don’t worry if you get told that you’re going to be punched or shot. These guys talk a good game, but they never really follow through on anything.
In fact, they are given to make bold pronouncements of how they’re about to unleash hell on somebody. Never happens. Probably because they all appear to be manic depressives as illustrated in our next category.
Game Over, Man! Game Fucking Over! - When not telling everyone how they’re gonna shoot them or punch them in the face, our heroes tend to get pessimistic. Once again, we can look to the Grant Repetition Principle to get countless instances of someone confidently asserting that they’re all going to die soon. It does not so much build up a state of fear and dread for their future as it bores the shit out me.
Here are more categories with spoilers. I am giving up major plot points from all books as well as the ending of this one so do not read if you don’t want to know.
Send In The Clones - One of the strongest moments of the series was when our first person narrator George was deliberately infected with the virus which forced her brother Shaun to shoot and kill her as she made her final blog entry. That scene pushed Feed up several notches for me as well as making me think that Mira Grant may have some pretty bold tricks up her sleeve.
Turns out the trick was to have a clone of George introduced in this one. That dropped my opinion of the entire story because now George’s ‘death’ was just emotional manipulation of the reader that had no true consequences. So there’s both a tragic death to let everyone break their hankies out, but still a happy ending to cheer.
Bullshit.
Shaun Mason Is A Douche Bag - I don’t know if Mira Grant has ever actually talked to any men or not, but if this is her view of what we’re like, then I feel like our entire gender has been insulted.
As the daredevil Irwin who ‘pokes dead things with sticks’ (Yet another example of the Grant Repetition Principle), Shaun was just a loyal but brainless minion to George in the first book. George’s death could have forced him into being an interesting character in the second one. Instead what we got was a self-absorbed abusive fuck who would punch his own employees if they dared mention his sacred sister’s name in a way he disapproved of and who preferred to go crazy town banana pants rather than deal with the here and now.
Fuck him.
Oops, I didn’t mean literally, George!
Incest! - I gather there’s a bit of controversy about the whole thing of George and Shaun being lovers. Since it was well established that they were adopted and not related by blood, then I didn’t have a problem with it.
What I did think was beyond creepy was that they continued to refer to each other as brother and sister rather than girlfriend, boyfriend, lover, sweet patootie, etc.
Yeah, I know George’s bullshit explanation about how they had to keep it secret because of their public image. Uh…No. Have a press conference and explain that you fell in love with the person you’ve known and trusted longer than anyone and stress that you are not actually related. Most people would probably be cool with that, but if they find out you’re secretly sleeping with someone you still refer to as your brother?
Yuck.
The Romeo And Juliet Factor - So George was dead for a while and it made Shaun into an asshole as well as crazy. We’re told over and over (The GRP again.) how he was always meant to outlive George, and how when he finally settles up with the vast conspiracy, he’s going to go off and just live with Ghost George in his head and be completely shit-your-pants-crazy. When George comes back from the dead, she mentions several times that they always thought that Shaun would die first, and after he did, she would bury him and then kill herself.
Obsessive, unhealthy love affairs that end in madness and/or suicide are not what I’m looking for in my zombie books.
The CDC Needs New Locks - In Deadline Shaun and company make two long and dangerous journeys to confront the CDC in two different cities. Both times end in disaster. In this one, they actually have a plan that makes some sense, but have to turn around and come back to Seattle before completing any of it.
And then they break into the CDC again.
Seriously, Mira?
The Stupidest Conspiracy Story Since The X-Files Went Off The Air - So the evil CDC was controlling the President by holding his wife and kids hostage while giving him a clone wife for the cameras. George was cloned by the CDC so that a programmed version could be used to manipulate and betray Shaun, but the underground elements led by the Vice-President used that to get a ‘good’ George and break the story about the virus to the world. Because George’s credibility is so fucking awesome that even showing up after being dead in a world full of blood thirsty zombies, people would instantly believe her.
The first stage of the plan? Have the president’s family freed in ten minutes by using secret elements the good guys already had in position.(Another action that we’re only told about, but don‘t get any details on.) George gets a gun and goes to the room with the Prez and evil CDC guy, tells everyone that the jig is up and then a Secret Sevice guy kills the CDC dude. After escaping the zombie outbreak, the files get sent out by their news site and George does a video telling everyone to listen to the President who tells everyone what’s been going on.
Sooooooooo…… Why exactly were George and Shaun so important again? Supposedly their credibility was vital to the plans of both sides. Maybe if instead of fucking around for over a year while trying to clone George, the VP and the loyal Secret Service agents could have just freed the President’s family, which apparently could have happened at any time since it was so easy that it was done in ten minutes after one phone call, and then just put him on TV to say that the CDC is EEEEVVVIIIIIIILLLLLL!
No one would have listened to the goddamn President of the United States if he said that his family was held hostage by the CDC? The only person that anyone in the world will believe is Georgia Mason? Christ, if people are that cynical in 2040 than just go ahead and clone Walter Cronkite to break the news.
I guess that wouldn’t work because….
George & Shaun Mason Are The Only People That Matter In The World! - Yeah, there’s some lip service paid to other people on their team, but by shifting the first person narration between two people who really only care about each other, it makes the books completely about them.
And if you’re trying to create a story that involves a vast political conspiracy and a worldwide plague of zombies, the scope needs to be wider than two people utterly obsessed with each other.
Part of the reason that I don’t buy the idea that George is the only journalist in the world who will be believed is that we never once saw what kind of impact her writing had. Yes, we were once again told how it got the President elected and all that, and they sometimes talked about their high ratings in Feed, but we never got a viewpoint from anyone else as to what their reporting meant to anyone reading it.
Over the course of these books, Oakland got firebombed and Florida was supposedly lost to hurricanes and zombie mosquitoes, and yet all of it was told to us third hand. Somewhere in these 1700 pages there should have been room to let us know what people outside of the George & Shaun bubble thought was going on.
I’ve spent so much time breaking this down because these three books ended up seeming like a wasted opportunity to me. Mira Grant came up with an intriguing twist on the zombie genre. Despite the flaws, she’s also got a compulsively readable style at times. When she remembered that she was writing a zombie novel and threw in some action, she actually did a pretty good job of it. There’s two tense and action filled conflicts with the undead in this that are top notch, but as I’ve pointed out here, that made up a very small portion of the overall story.
Instead of delivering on the potential of the world she created, she focused instead on the inner lives and emotional state of a couple of characters that became boring and irritating when she couldn’t think of enough stuff for them to do and just repeated the same crap over and over again.
When I reviewed the previous book, Feed, I noted that that there were very few zombie attacks in it despite it being called a zombie book. Compared toWhen I reviewed the previous book, Feed, I noted that that there were very few zombie attacks in it despite it being called a zombie book. Compared to Deadline, that one now looks like The Night of the Living Dead.
There’s an opening chapter here with our intrepid heroes escaping a pack of zombies that ends on page 18. We don’t get another actual zombie encounter until over 500 PAGES later. Not that there aren’t zombies around. The characters flee a major city right before it gets firebombed due a zombie outbreak. There’s another chapter where two of them are being chased through the halls of a government building, but they only HEAR the zombie behind them, never see it. So our first person narrator does not actually lay eyes on a zombie after the first chapter until almost the end of this overstuffed book.
If this was some kind of more serious suspense/character based-type horror novel based on the impact of a mostly unseen threat, this could be an interesting take on the genre. But it’s not. It is most definitely meant to be a fast paced action horror conspiracy thriller with everyone talking repeatedly about how dangerous it is to go outside because of all the zombies, and there’s all kinds of scenes about prepping weapons and talk, talk, talk, goddamn talk about the zombie threat. So spending over 500 pages in between incidents of where the narrator actually draws a gun and shoots at a zombie is freakin' ridiculous.
Mira Grant came up with a pretty nice twist on the zombie genre where a general outbreak was caused by a virus that now lies dormant in everyone’s system. Get bit by a zombie and you turn into one. Die from a heat attack and the virus goes active, and you still turn undead cannibal. 30 years after the initial outbreak, there is a stalemate between the living and the dead. Large areas are considered too dangerous to enter, and most people spend all their time living and working in fortified buildings with advanced technology used to screen and lock off the infected. A new breed of Internet journalists are the main characters who have gotten involved in a larger conspiracy that capitalizes on a world full of people afraid to go outside.
The parts of Feed and Deadline where Grant lays out how this fearful society functions are some of the most inventive and interesting parts of the story. Unfortunately, it’s become clear that Grant is far more interested in coming up with and describing all these changes and future security measures than she is in zombie fightin’ action. Despite the very few scenes of actual zombie encounters, we are repeatedly told how dangerous the outside world is and walked through the testing and security procedures that everyone goes through.
While she’ll go into detail over and over again describing the blood screening units and how they work, when we finally get a zombie attack, they’re just ‘zombies’. No descriptions of age or gender or how they’re clothed or how they‘ve decayed. I realize that it’d be overkill to try and describe every member of a zombie mob, but the fact that Grant doesn’t give a single detailed description shows where she ranks the zombie importance to this story.
In fact, I think Grant may have been better served if these books were about just a society cowering from a dangerous virus because that’s obviously what she has the most interest in. The only reason zombies are in these books is because it gives an easy excuse for everyone to be heavily armed and something to run from when she finally amps up the action.
There are some other big flaws with these books. Grant has a bad case of repeatshititis and we’re told variations on the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over.. You get the picture. For example, our narrator loves coffee but has to drink Coke for reasons I won’t get into. We are told on every other page how he craves coffee but has to be content with drinking ‘syrupy sweet’ Coke. And someone is always handing him a Coke. I got it the first dozen times, Mira. Please put down that two-liter bottle you've been bashing me on the head with.
The unraveling of the conspiracy storyline is pretty stupid, too. Our intrepid heroes get secret medical research dropped on them. Their first reaction is to make the dangerous journey to a government facility to ask them about it. It doesn’t go well. They run and hide. Later they get yet more secret medical research dropped on them. And their plan is… to go to another government facility and demand answers. Yeah, guess how that goes.
The biggest frustration in this book comes from Feed so be aware that I’m giving up the ending of that book in this (view spoiler)[ Georgia Mason was the narrator of the first book and one of the more surprising things is that she was killed at the end after getting deliberately infected with the zombie virus. Her adopted brother Shaun had to shoot her. Shaun is our narrator for this book, and he is a complete douche bag. He is constantly having conversations with his dead sister because he ‘hears’ her in his head, and he freely admits this to everyone. Yet if anyone (including his blogging employees) ask him about this, or bring up Georgia in almost any way, Shaun’s immediate reaction is to punch them in the face. He makes no apologies and almost brags about it.
Also, his immediate response to bad news is to punch walls repeatedly. Which no one is allowed to question him about, either. Yet we’re supposed to believe that these journalist bloggers are so loyal to Shaun that they continue to overlook that he’s violent and dangerously unhinged, and they go out of their way to avoid upsetting him. This is all supposed to illustrate how devastated Shaun is by Georgia’s death, but it just makes him seem like a self-absorbed abusive fuck. “It’s my own fault he blacked my eye, Officer. I asked him something he didn’t like, but please don’t arrest him. He‘s really a good guy. He‘s just having some problems right now.” (hide spoiler)].
Despite all of this bitching, I still almost gave this book 3 stars. (It was a twist at the end that I saw coming from the early chapters that finally dropped this to a 2 star rating for me.) Grant has a very readable style and came up with some interesting ideas for the zombie genre. This is being marketed as a trilogy, and I’ll probably end up reading the final one when it comes out. But looking ahead, I see that it’s also over 500 pages, and I’ve got a sinking feeling I know what most of it’ll be about. Repeated blood screenings and lots and lots of talking about zombies, but precious few actual zombie encounters is my guess. It’s too bad because a little less repetition and a lot more blood splatter from some head shots could have made these some of my favorite zombie books....more
This book is about mobs of mindless zombies influencing American politics. Surprisingly, it’s not about the Tea Party.
In the year 2014, genetically enThis book is about mobs of mindless zombies influencing American politics. Surprisingly, it’s not about the Tea Party.
In the year 2014, genetically engineered viruses mutated and caused the dead to come back to life and start munching on people like senior citizens at a casino buffet. Over 20% of the world’s population got gobbled up like popcorn shrimp, and in 2040 the threat of the still existing virus and zombies has changed life forever. Since the virus is present in everyone’s system, when anyone dies, whether it’s from zombie bite or natural causes, they will turn into one of the undead cannibals. Large gatherings of people rarely occur, everyone’s homes and cars are fortresses equipped with high tech screening equipment and huge areas (like Alaska) have been given up as zones too hazardous to enter without special permits and training.
Georgia Mason and her brother Shaun are part of the new generation of bloggers. Georgia is a straight Newsie, reporting only the facts and trying to get past the spin. Shaun is kind of like one of the guys on Jackass who goes out to taunt the undead while recording and posting his exploits. When they are offered a chance to follow the presidential campaign of a senator it’s a chance for them to move to the head of the pack of web journalists. However, when the senator’s caravan is the victim of a zombie attack the Masons get caught up in a dangerous conspiracy.
This was a pretty unique zombie tale with some very good ideas in it. The explanation for the way the virus works is one of the more thought out causes of the undead I’ve read. It also shows a lot of thought of what the media of the future is going to look like with competing websites featuring a mix of news/opinion/death defying features and even fiction. Mira Grant has created a tale of how the fear of external threats can become an everyday part of society that’s ripe for exploitation.
However, at 600 pages it feels a bit overstuffed. We’re repeatedly walked through the blood screenings and other security measures that are part of society to the point of boredom. Georgia has an eye condition due to the zombie virus present in her system, and there are about 1236 instances of security guys demanding that she take off her prescription sunglasses and the problems it causes. And for a book where the threat of zombies is ever present, there are very few actual zombie attacks in it.
I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the Mason’s role in this story. They’re supposed to be young journalists on their way up, but somehow Georgia‘s reports quickly become must reading on the web as she instantly became an expert on presidential politics her first time covering a campaign. Also, Georgia and Shaun are constantly looking down their noses at everyone around them for being ‘amatuers’ when it comes to dealing with zombies because (as we are repeatedly reminded) they are licensed and trained journalists with extensive time in the field. So these young people are apparently the only ones with the smarts, experience and ability to see what’s going on and everyone, including a US senator, defers to them to an unbelievable degree.
Still, this was fun mash-up of a zombie story and a political/ conspiracy thriller with some interesting predictions about where the new media will take us. I’ll probably check out the next one in the series, but I hope there’s more brain munching and fewer blood tests in the second book....more
Working in a cube farm, I dread the cold & flu season because you’re surrounded by hacking, sneezing, phlegm-filled germ factories who insist on cominWorking in a cube farm, I dread the cold & flu season because you’re surrounded by hacking, sneezing, phlegm-filled germ factories who insist on coming to work and spreading their misery because they don’t want to burn their sick days on ‘just a cold’. I’ve often thought that we should set up some kind of quarantine zone in the building and make any of the infected go there and work so that the rest of us may be spared. After reading The Last Town on Earth, I’m torn between thinking that it’s a bad idea or that we should post armed guards to keep the sickies out of the break room.
Thomas Mullen took the 1918 flu epidemic that killed millions and has built a fictional story about one town’s response to the threat. Commonwealth is a logging town built by a man who turned his back on his rich and ruthless family to start a mill where he could prove that workers could be treated decently and still turn a profit. He and his wife, a political activist for women’s and workers' rights, have helped build a community in the woods that has attracted many loggers who have been the victims of unfair labor practices and violent strike breakers. Commonwealth is just starting to run in the black, mainly due to the increase in lumber demand from the government after the U.S. entry into World War I.
However, when the deadly flu breaks out in neighboring towns, the leaders and citizens of Commonwealth decide that they’ll quarantine themselves since no one is sick and they’re already isolated. Anyone can leave, but no one will be allowed to enter until the flu has run its course. Armed guards are posted to prevent anyone from entering the town. It’s seems like a simple and straight forward plan, but when a starving soldier comes out the woods and wants to enter, it starts a series of events that will begin to tear the town apart. Commonwealth will also have to contend with a ‘patriotic’ group from a neighboring town who are suspicious of the ‘socialist’ enclave in the woods and want to break their quarantine to make sure that there are no draft dodgers or spies hiding there.
This was an original and intriguing idea for a book, and it’s got a rich historical backdrop with the characters contending not only with the flu, but the labor movement of the era along with the political and social issues associated with both the pro- and anti-war movements. I also learned some chilling things about the U.S. during this time. For example, the government basically outlawed any dissent or forms of protest against the war.
As he did with The Great Depression in The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, Mullen makes the day-to-day life of a bygone era really come alive. His style is deceptively plain, but he still manages to make the characters complex. I didn’t like this one quite as much as Firefly Brothers, but still a really interesting story. ...more
It comes across as a little dated. (When the hero sprays his pregnant wife's clothes with DDT because of flea concerns and it's considered a good thinIt comes across as a little dated. (When the hero sprays his pregnant wife's clothes with DDT because of flea concerns and it's considered a good thing, you gotta laugh.) But the core story holds up remarkably well.
Instead of the typical apocalyptic aftermath story with brave survivors fighting for survival, we get a small band of average people who would rather coast along by scrounging off the old world rather than trying to rebuild.
Stewart was doing a version of 'Life After People' decades before the new book and History channel series here with pretty detailed theories about the way things would break down. His view seems more optimistic than what would actually happen. (Electricity and running water lasting far longer than seems feasible.) But he obviously put a great deal of thought of how the break down of civilization would occur....more
This is the story of a small town hell raiser named Buster ’Rant’ Casey who did some slightly unusual things when he was growing up like collecting buThis is the story of a small town hell raiser named Buster ’Rant’ Casey who did some slightly unusual things when he was growing up like collecting bucketfuls of his classmate’s teeth. Young Rant also angers more animals than Steve Irwin so that they’ll bite him and infect him with rabies which he deliberately spreads to his class mates. After he grows up and moves to the city, Rant joins a disenfranchised part of society forced by law to stay in their homes during the day and who get their kicks by crashing cars into each other. After his spectacular fiery death, the government labels him a bio-terrorist who unleashed a deadly outbreak of rabies while others claim that Rant may have had a larger destiny than anyone can imagine.
And that’s not even the weirdest or most twisted part of the story…
This is my second favorite Chuck Palahniuk novel after Fight Club. Rant’s story is told as an oral history by a variety of friends and enemies. The mishmash of weird anecdotes about a guy who seems to be completely fucked in the head eventually coalesce into a wild narrative that almost makes an audible click as the story starts locking together.
Like all of Chuck P.’s books, it’s disturbing and gory and gross and funny and definitely not for the faint of heart or easily offended. As soon as I finished it the first time a few years ago, I knew I’d come back to it again because this is one of those story where knowing the ending gives you a whole different spin on things your second time through. ...more
You know what’s really scary? Getting sick while you’re reading the first part of The Stand. Just try running a fever, going through a box of tissues You know what’s really scary? Getting sick while you’re reading the first part of The Stand. Just try running a fever, going through a box of tissues and guzzling the better part of a bottle of NyQuil while Stephen King describes the grisly deaths of almost every one on Earth from a superflu. On top of feeling like crap, you'll be terrified. Bonus!
After a bio-engineered virus that acts like a revved up cold escapes from a U.S. government lab, it takes only weeks for almost all of humanity to succumb to the disease. A handful of survivors are mysteriously immune and begin having strange dreams, some of which are about a very old woman called Mother Abigail asking them to come see her. More disturbing are nightmares about a mysterious figure named Randall Flagg also known as the Dark Man or the Walkin’ Dude.
As they make their way through an America almost entirely devoid of people, the survivors begin to unite and realize that the flu was just the beginning of their problems. While some are drawn to the saintly Mother Abigail in Boulder Colorado who tells them that they have been chosen by God, others have flocked to Flagg in Las Vegas who is determined to annihilate all those who refuse to pledge their allegiance to him.
If King would have just written a book about a world destroyed by plague and a small number of people struggling in the aftermath, it probably would have been a compelling story. What sets this one apart is the supernatural element. Flagg is the embodiment of evil and chaos. He's a mysterious figure who has been giving the wrong people the push needed for them to make things worse for everyone, and he sees the plague as his chance to fulfill his own destiny as a wrecker of humanity.
And on the other side, we have God. Yep, that God. The Big Cheese himself. But this isn’t some kindly figure in a white robe with a white beard or George Burns or Morgan Freeman. This is the Old Testament God who demands obedience and worship while usually rewarding his most faithful servants with gruesome deaths.
King calls this a tale of dark Christianity in his forward, and one of the things I love about this book is that it does feel like a Biblical story, complete with contradictions and a moves-in-mysterious-ways factor. Stories don’t get much more epic than this, and King does a great job of depicting the meltdown of the world through the stories of a variety of relateable characters. (Larry Underwood remains among my favorite King creations.)
One of my few complaints is that this features a lot of King’s anti-technology themes that he’d use in several books like Cell or The Dark Tower series. We’re told repeatedly that the ‘old ways’ like trying to get the power back on in Boulder are a ‘death trip’. The good guys gather in the Rocky Mountains, but if they try to get the juice going so they won’t freeze to death in the winter, they’re somehow acting in defiance of God’s will and returning to the bad habits? Not all tech is bad tech, Mr. King. Nature is a bitch and will kill your ass quicker than the superflu.
Here’s another thing I’m not wild about. When this was published in the late ‘70s, the bean counters at King’s publishers had decided that the book as written would be too pricey in hardback and no one would pay a whopping $13 for a Stephen King hardback. So King cut about three hundred pages.
Around 1990 after it had become apparent that King could publish his shopping list as a best seller, he put those pages back in and released the uncut version. Which I’m fine with. The original stuff was cut for a financial reason, not an editorial one, and there’s some very nice bits of story added in. If King would have stopped there, we would have had a great definitive final version as originally created by the author.
Unfortunately, he seemed to catch a case of Lucasitis and decided to update the story a bit and change its original time frame from 1980 to 1990. I’m not sure why that seemed necessary to him. Yes, the book was a bit dated by then, but it was of its time. He didn’t rewrite the text (Which I’m grateful for.), but just stuck in some references to Madonna and Ronald Reagan and Spuds McKenzie.
This led to a whole bunch of anachronisms. Would students in 1990 call soldiers ’war pigs’? Someone in New York picks up a phone book to look up the number to call an ambulance instead of dialing 911? A song called Baby, Can You Dig Your Man is a huge hit? None of it quite fits together. There's also a layer of male chauvinism and lack of diversity that you can overlook in a book written in the late '70s, but seems out of place for a book set and updated for 1990.
The things that irritate me are still far outweighed by one of my favorite stories of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil.
I’m also glad to get a long overdue audio edition of this book. Great narration and 40+ hours of end of the world horror make for a damn fine listening experience....more
Loading...
