Dual Book Review: Feed and Deadline by Mira Grant
Written by: Beth Woodward, CC2K Books Editor
BIG, HUGE, GIGANTIC SPOILER WARNING!!! THERE BE DRAGONS…ER, ZOMBIES HERE! DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200!
Okay, don’t say you weren’t warned.
First and foremost, the blurb, again courtesy of the Hachette Book Group website:
Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn’t seem as fun when you’ve lost as much as he has.
But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.
Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.
When I read Feed last year, my reaction as a reader was, “Ohmygod I can’t believe she killed George that was so sad but unbelievably awesome ohmygod ohmygod!” My reaction as a fellow writer, and as a book critic, was, “How the hell is she planning on writing a sequel when she killed her protagonist?”
Part of that answer was pretty obvious: Shaun would take over the narration, as he did at the end of Feed. But my concern was that Shaun was not as strongly developed in Feed as George was. Whereas George was the more serious, mature one, Shaun was the devil-may-care, life of the party. It worked in his interactions with George, because they complimented one another. But without George, I feared that Shaun would feel like half a character and the book wouldn’t be as strong.
Ladies and gentleman, I can admit when I’m wrong.
In all fairness, I wasn’t entirely wrong: Shaun does feel like half a character, but in a way that makes him all that much more riveting to the reader. Without George, Shaun is lost and broken. Life has ceased to have all meaning. He still runs After the End Times, the blogging site that he and George shared, but leaves all the reporting to his underlings. He continues to live for one reason only: to find out why George was really killed, and to avenge her death.
But George isn’t really gone for him: she lives on as a voice that speaks to him in his head, and a vision he occasionally sees. In a way, George’s presence is almost that much more tangible because she’s dead. Even when Shaun communicates with her in his head, it’s her absence she’s feeling. He’s convinced he’s crazy and having hallucinations. Everyone around him is convinced he’s crazy and having hallucinations. But he just can’t seem to bring himself to wish her away, even if she is just a figment of his imagination.
(That said, I was never entirely convinced that she was actually a figment of his imagination. I have no evidence to back this, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part. But the ambiguity of George’s beyond-the-grave conversations with Shaun, and the tenuousness of Shaun’s sanity, is one of the most interesting elements of the book.)
I didn’t think anything Grant could throw at me would be harder to read than the last 15% of Feed. I was wrong. Deadline is harder. It’s rare that you find a book with such an exciting and twisted plot combined with such a poignant, harrowing exploration of grief.
But the plot here is important, too, revealing new and important information about the conspiracy that got George killed. That said, in another year, I’m going to have to read Deadline again to remember the specific plot details that got revealed in this installment. (And I will, because I want to find out why George was killed, too!) But the emotional punch this book packs…that part isn’t going anywhere.
One word of warning: if you do not like cliffhangers, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK NOW! This book packs a doozy, the likes of which I haven’t see…well, possibly ever. Wait another year until Blackout comes out, then read both at the same time.
But do read them eventually. Deadline is an awesome book, and I have no doubt Blackout will be just as good. I, for one, can’t wait? Is it 2012 yet?
Feed and Deadline are available in both e-book and print format now.