What:

The Newsflesh Trilogy:

Zombies and blogging. Cool.
Source credit: http://miragrant.com/wallpapers.php

Feed, Deadline, & Blackout.

Who:

Mira Grant (AKA Seanan McGuire)

She is a very busy author. She won an award for best new author in 2010 (John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer), and already all these books? And they’re not stupid books, either. (You know how some authors write a gazillion books because they don’t seem to care whether they’re any good? That’s not the case here.)

Newsflesh and a new series, Parasitology, are written under her Mira Grant moniker. She has about a gazillion other projects under the Seanan McGuire name.  I’ve only read the Newflesh trilogy so far (and plan to read the novellas soon). Do any of you have suggestions as to what of her other works I should read?

The Nitty Gritty:

Spoiler-free breakdown for you–which means, again, there’s not a lot I can say about the actual plot.

This is not a book series about a zombie outbreak. This is a story set 20-25 years or so after the zombie outbreak. The zombies are around and make life difficult and scary, but this is absolutely not another “What’s this about rabies-like symptoms in the news?” kind of story (and I will read those books ’til the cows come home, but I’ll also admit it’s nice to take a break and look into the future as well).  The protagonists are bloggers, hence the title Feed, as in RSS but also as in zombies. Get it? Eh? Eh? ;D  (I actually do think it’s witty.)

Since the series about a group of bloggers, there are ‘blog posts’ every chapter, but it’s not annoying (like when books try to use IM’ing as narrative and it just looks weird). Grant does a nice job of foreshadowing just enough to make the reader feel smart for unraveling pieces of mystery along the way, but I’ll be honest: I was about 15 pages from the end of Blackout and I still wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to end.

Oddly enough, as much as it has going for it, I sort of dislike it because I disliked almost all of the characters–they all rubbed me the wrong way. Which, when I stop and think about that, only underscores how good an author Grant is, to be able to write characters that powerfully.

Newsflesh is definitely worth reading, and I’ll be reading the related novellas at some point…   Please don’t forget to suggest what titles I should try from her McGuire works, if any of you know which are good!

Thanks!