Baltimore 1966 – a/k/a “The good ole days.” (For some people.)
Madeline Schwartz has been a wife and mother for almost two decades when she suddenly deBaltimore 1966 – a/k/a “The good ole days.” (For some people.)
Madeline Schwartz has been a wife and mother for almost two decades when she suddenly decides to turn her back on the boring comforts of the upper middle class. It isn’t easy for a woman in her late ‘30s to start over, but she begins pulling together a new life, including a secret relationship with an African-American cop. When Maddie discovers the body of a murder victim she manages to eventually leverage that into an entry level job at one of the local newspapers. She wants to become a real reporter, and when the body of Cleo Sherwood is found in a lake Maddie begins to research Cleo’s life and death even though everyone tells her that nobody cares about the story of a black party girl who met a bad end.
What Laura Lippman has written here is a character driven crime novel that smoothly shifts through a variety of viewpoints. Not only do we get the ghostly voice of Cleo who expresses dismay at how Maddie’s investigation is only stirring up trouble, but there are many short first-person interludes from the different people that Maddie interacts with. Sometimes these encounters make a big impact on her, like a dinner party with an old high school friend, and sometimes it’s a person that Maddie barely registers, like a waitress who serves her lunch. All of these characters have their own stories going on, and some of them are important to Maddie’s and some have no direct bearing on her at all. When you put them all together you get vivid picture of a bygone era as well as the full story of what happened to Cleo.
Lippman trusts the reader to remember what they’ve read in these parts so that very often we don’t see key events, and you have to infer what’s happened based on what we know about these other characters. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, but it all fits the tone and structure of the book so that the reader comes to feel like just one of these flies on the wall that knows far more about Maddie’s business than she realizes.
The center of all this is Maddie, and again Lippman delivers with a detailed story about a complex woman whose old secrets put her on a path that she is now desperately trying to change. Her courage and determination are admirable, and yet there’s also a sense of entitlement to Maddie. Yes, she’s a woman struggling against sexism, but she also blithely assumes she can do a job that she’s had no experience or training for. She’s also willing to do some shady things to get what she wants, and she has little regard what damage she might do other people. Sometimes she comes across as the sympathetic hero of the story, but there are points where she seems like the villain of it. I didn’t always like Maddie, but I was always interested in her.
This also acts as kind of low key tribute to the newspaper business even if watching the sausage get made isn’t always pretty, and Lippman, a former journalist herself, ends the book with a moving tribute to the five employees of the Capital Gazette who were killed during a mass shooting at their office.
Top notch writing, great character work, and a unique structure all make for one compelling book....more
A small Florida community is stunned when a housewife in a seemingly happy marriage murders her two children and then kills herself. Reporter Richard A small Florida community is stunned when a housewife in a seemingly happy marriage murders her two children and then kills herself. Reporter Richard Hudson writes up the story and thinks his work is done, but his managing editor wants an in-depth piece on the rising suicide rates using the dead lady as a local angle.
With that as the starting point and considering that this is a Hard Case Crime reprint of a Charles Willeford novel you might be expecting the book to be about this intrepid reporter uncovering something related to these deaths. I certainly was. Surprise!
This isn’t the first time that HCC has published a book that subverts expectations. Donald Westlake’s Memory isn’t really a crime novel at all. Neither is this. Instead it’s more of a character study of Richard and his own domestic situation. What we learn is that he’s pretty much an enormous jerkface. He’s not much a husband or father who deliberately stays on the night shift so he can avoid domestic responsibility. He’s also content to drift along as an unambitious reporter who has developed a variety of shortcuts to avoid actually doing his job. Richard rationalizes this as being necessary for him to work on his true calling of being a playwright, but it’s quickly apparent that just the dodge he’s using to feel better about being perfectly content to just coast along with minimum effort.
What evolves through Richard’s skewed perspective is a pretty interesting snapshot of life in the early ‘60s. It’s no shock that it’s filled with casual sexism and women are treated as second class citizens. Yet as Richard considers why a woman who had everything that American society said she needs to make her happy would kill herself, he finds himself increasingly thinking about his own life and marriage.
Some readers might complain that this is bait-and-switch since it’s not technically a crime novel, but I found it well-written and somewhat compelling. There’s nothing fantastic or groundbreaking to it, but it’s like a time capsule that gives you a sense of the time and place as well as a glimpse of white male entitlement at its peak....more
Is money the root of all evil or does it make the world go round?
The answer to that is yes.
Annabel is American living in Geneva with husband Matthew wIs money the root of all evil or does it make the world go round?
The answer to that is yes.
Annabel is American living in Geneva with husband Matthew whose job with a secretive Swiss bank keeps him away from her too much, but the trade off is the wealthy lifestyle they’re living. Marina is journalist engaged to Grant who comes from a very rich family, and his father is about to become a candidate for the presidency of the United States. It might seem like both these ladies won the trophy husband lottery, but Annabel is bored and lonely while Marina feels like she’s have to have to give up the job she loves to really be part of Grant’s family. Yeah, I know. Rich people problems.
However, things take a turn for both women. Annabel’s husband is killed in a small plane crash with home of his wealthy clients, and she starts questioning exactly what he was doing at the bank. While on a vacation trip to Paris, Marina does a favor for her old friend and editor by picking up a USB drive with encrypted data, but this errand leads to her ending up with information on money laundering done for international criminal types. Both Annabel and Marina quickly find out that these are not the kind of people who like you asking questions about their business.
This is a solid thriller whose biggest strength is in the idea that there’s a vast ocean of blood money being hidden and utilized by some of the world’s most powerful people. If you’ve been paying attention to current events that’s a story with the ring of authenticity to it. I mean, a rich asshole with presidential aspirations and shady international business connections isn’t much of a stretch these days, and it gives the whole book an honest hook to it.
It’s well written by airport thriller standards, and the presentation of the lives that Annabel and Marina are leading is very well done. There’s some interesting thematic stuff in that Annabel truly loves her husband is now filled with regrets about the independent lifestyle she gave up even if she is living in the lap of luxury. It fits nicely with Marina’s story since she’s on the verge of essentially making that same choice.
Unfortunately, the weaker side comes with the thriller stuff. There’s a few scenes with characters being followed and some lightweight chase scenes, but this isn’t an action story. It’s more about paranoia and dread which is fitting for a book about the money and power lurking behind world events, but I could have used more of a sense of danger to it.
And frankly it seems like a book that real world has outpaced in terms of how much trouble we’re all in. The characters here have faith that a free press and government oversight can ultimately stop and punish people who break the law like this. It doesn’t take into account that the evil rich doing this stuff are now the ones in power, and that institutions we counted on to protect us have been corrupted or neutered.
So it’s a decent read with an interesting idea and above average characterization, but it comes across as too naive a story to really accomplish what it might have just a few years ago....more
The main reason I wanted to read this is because I’m such a huge fan of the TV show Fargo. Noah Hawley is the main producer and writer responsible forThe main reason I wanted to read this is because I’m such a huge fan of the TV show Fargo. Noah Hawley is the main producer and writer responsible for transforming the great Coen brothers’ movie into something that has risen to the top of my viewing list even during this Golden Age of Television which has filled so many DVRs. If you haven’t seen it yet then watch it right now. Go on. We’ll wait. It’s only two seasons of ten episodes each so it won’t take you that long. Then you’ll be ready to properly appreciate Hawley’s talents. All done? Good. Let’s talk about the book then.
A private plane carrying eleven people crashes in the ocean shortly after takeoff from Martha’s Vineyard. A middle-aged painter named Scott Burroughs survives the impact and saves both himself and a small boy by making a miraculous swim to shore. Scott is at first hailed as a hero, but he wants only to be left alone. Since the plane was also carrying a media tycoon who ran a cable news network and a wealthy financial advisor who was about to be indicted for shady dealings there are a lot of questions about why it crashed. An opinionated bully of a political commentator from the news network uses his show to spin wild conspiracy theories as well as inciting a witch hunt against Scott for having the unmitigated gall to survive while rich and important people died.
There’s two parallel stories going on here. The first is a Bridge of San Luis Rey kind of thing where we follow the lives of the people on the plane as well as others impacted by the crash. The second involves Scott trying to cope with the crash and its aftermath. There’s also a mystery lurking in the background of what ultimately did happen on board the jet.
A lot of the history and reflections of the characters have to do with wealth. As a person who wasn’t rich and was essentially just hitching a ride because of a chance encounter there’s an interesting dynamic in that Scott was in this bubble of privilege for only moments before being thrown out of it violently. His lack of money and yet being with people who had it in that moment where their bank accounts couldn’t save them is seen as suspicious. The lingering presence of wealth hangs over the backgrounds and actions of the other characters, too. Everyone has to come to terms in some way with how money - serious money – is what makes the world go round. Here’s a bit I particularly liked:
“But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know aswealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire’s account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict.”
I wasn’t entirely happy with the ending which seemed rushed and as if it was kind of what Hawley wished could happen in this situation rather than what actually would. Still, this was a very well written story with many profound bits of wisdom about life, death, art, money, media, and air travel gone wrong. It’s the same kind of story telling skill he’s shown himself to be a master of on Fargo.
(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley for review.) ...more
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.
An Edgar Award winner for Best First Novel? Seriously? Must have been a weak year for debut crime books.
Mulligan is a newspaper reporter covering a stAn Edgar Award winner for Best First Novel? Seriously? Must have been a weak year for debut crime books.
Mulligan is a newspaper reporter covering a string of arsons in the Mount Hope area of Providence, Rhode Island. Since the arson cops are completely inept, it looks like Mulligan will have to solve the crime as he dodges fluff assignments from his editor, deals with a bitchy ex-wife, romances his new girlfriend, and bemoans the state of the newspaper industry.
I had three big problems with this book. First, our hero is a newspaper reporter. If you’re going to have your protagonist’s occupation be something obsolete at least make it something offbeat like a steamboat captain or video store rental clerk because the idea that a newspaper would allow a reporter to run around spending all his time on one story is so unrealistic that I couldn't suspend disbelief long enough to buy into it.
The second issue is how the author portrays his Rhode Island setting. I generally like it when someone sets a crime novel somewhere other than New York or L.A., but Mulligan’s narration is filled with constant references that are supposed to make the reader think that the political corruption, weather, and road conditions are incredibly bad in Rhode Island. I hate to break this to Mulligan, but the only other places that deal with the same type of problems are FREAKIN’ EVERYWHERE! Everyone’s government is crap, the roads suck, and we’ve all got shitty weather. Well, maybe not San Diego, but you get the point. The idea that Rhode Island is somehow special because of these factors had me rolling my eyes repeatedly.
The worst problem in the book is our narrator Mulligan. DeSilva obviously set out to create a quirky main character in the tradition of ‘80s movies like Fletch or Beverly Hills Cop. Mulligan is a 40 year old smart ass reporter who lives in a shitty apartment with no furniture or cooking utensils. He ignores his ulcer while living on a diet of cigars, beer, and diner food. He doesn’t allow anyone to use his first name, and he rolls around in a beat up old Ford Bronco he calls Secretariat. (Get it? Get it? Oh, the hilarity.) He’s got a crazy ex-wife who calls him constantly to curse him out, and she got custody of the dog he claims to love. Despite being middle-aged and broke he somehow attracts a stream of younger women including his incredibly hot 20-something girlfriend and fellow reporter.
I probably could have lived with all this and chalked it up to just lazy character development that substitutes quirks for actual emotions, but the worst part is that the Mulligan is a Red Sox fan. He’s one of those types who constantly wears hats and jerseys (Much like how the Chevy Chase version of Fletch loved the Lakers.) and feels the need to repeatedly express his love for the Sox while also subjecting the readers to constant recaps of all the games he watches over the course of the novel. Red Sox fans may care. I don't.
I kind of liked the offbeat ending but overall was disappointed with this....more
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
Remember back during the Iraq War when all those journalists were embedded with the US troops, and it brought up a lot of ethical questions about the Remember back during the Iraq War when all those journalists were embedded with the US troops, and it brought up a lot of ethical questions about the government/military trying to control the news? Couldn’t that make for a pretty good story concept in which sci-fi was once again used to delve into tricky issues our society faces?
On the other hand, they could just blow some shit up real good.
Lex Falk is a respected but weary journalist sent to human colony Eighty-Six to report on a conflict between the government and some locals that the official sources are downplaying as they try to manipulate the media into reporting the story they’re selling. As Falk starts digging for the real story, he gets an offer to participate in a secret project by a group looking for the truth, too.
Through technobabble he’ll be ‘embedded’ into willing soldier Nestor Bloom before he goes out on his next mission. While Falk’s body floats in an isolation tank, his consciousness will be transferred to Bloom’s body where he’ll ride along as a passenger. But when Bloom takes a bullet to the head, Falk finds himself controlling a damaged body trapped in a war zone.
I’d been reading a lot of the cosmic Marvel comic stuff that Dan Abnett was part of the creative team for, and those books had me thinking that this could really be something next level like those so I was disappointed. The world building feels simplistic and surface level which would make sense if Abnett was really trying to say something about controlling the media in reality which would require things seeming familiar, but just when that aspect is getting interesting Falk goes into Bloom’s head. Then the book shifts into a big sci-fi war story. Neither one of these is a bad idea, but it really seems like Abnett couldn’t commit one way or another.
And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I might have liked this book better if it wasn’t for Tom Cruise. I saw Edge of Tomorrow over the summer, and that was an utterly fantastic future war story that balanced great sci-fi ideas and action with very human emotions. This seemed pale in comparison....more
Oh, mid-‘90s, how quaint you seem in this book published in ‘96 with your dial-up internet connections, faxes, pagers, landline phones, and new-fangleOh, mid-‘90s, how quaint you seem in this book published in ‘96 with your dial-up internet connections, faxes, pagers, landline phones, and new-fangled digital cameras.
Perhaps the thing dating this the most is the idea that The Rocky Mountain News editors’ biggest concern is that they’ll get scooped by another newspaper in the fast paced world of print journalism, and not that their entire industry will collapse and they’ll be out of business by 2009.
Of course, if all their reporters acted like Jack McEvoy, it’s no wonder they went broke. Jack’s twin brother was a cop who apparently shot himself, but when Jack decides to exploit his tragic death by writing a story about police suicides, the research indicates that a serial killer has been stalking cops across the country and making it look like they killed themselves. Soon Jack has blackmailed his way onto an FBI task force chasing the killer by ruthlessly threatening to expose the hunt and maybe spooking the guy, but letting his brother’s murderer potentially go free is a small price to pay to get a really righteous scoop. He runs up a huge expense account bill by tagging along as the FBI tracks the killer across the country, and he never really does give the Denver paper the juicy exclusives they’re expecting. So it seems like the old Rocky Mountain News had some pretty sloppy business practices going on when it came to covering stories.
You can probably tell that I wasn’t overly fond of Jack as a character. I found him self-absorbed and incredibly stupid at times. It’s too bad, because this was a better than average serial killer story with new take on the premise and lots of good twists and turns to keep it interesting. If I would have found Jack more sympathetic, I probably would have liked it more. ...more
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