Review: Feed by Mira Grant

Feed by Mira Grant
(Newsflesh Trilogy #1)

4 out of 5 stars

Published by Orbit

Not one for zombie books usually, I picked this one up because it came so highly recommended. The plot sounded like it had more to it than some shambling corpses moaning "braaaaiiins" while doing the zombie shuffle. I was expecting interesting zombie novel. I got blood-racing mystery, action and heart-wrenching drama.

Imagine a world where every single person is infected with a virus. This virus will turn you into a zombie when you die. Imagine more than seventy-five percent of the world population killed by the virus. This is the world Georgia and Shaun are born in. Adopted brother and sister form with their best friend Buffy the team of After the End Times, a blog dedicated to news. But blogging is a dangerous business in 2040...

Feed is a good book. It has a rock-steady foundation and lovable characters that inhabit its world. Even if you don't like the actual content, I don't think anyone can say this book was not thought through. Usually I find little plot holes in a book. They don't bother me much, but they're there. I couldn't find any in Feed. The characters stayed within their personality. If there was a computer in scene one, it's still there in scene two. I admire this extend of editing that goes into this book.

I loved that there was a good reason for the zombies to turn, you know.. into zombies. I hate lame excuses like, they just turned up this way! There was an extensive background that made it a whole lot more believable for me.

The extend of the details will put some people off. There is a lot of in-depth philosophy, info on the way viruses behave, and the inner workings in the blogging world. This book is VERY heavy on the blog mechanics. Because people don't leave their houses any more, except if they must, blogs are the new form of entertainment. They will be the first to tell you where a new outbreak is. There are a lot of different styles of blogging, and there is a lot of emphasis on the characteristics of each. As a blogger myself, I found this quite interesting, but I can totally understand why some people won't.

If you decide to give Feed a try, be prepared to invest a bit in the story. The plot doesn't always move along all that fast, but it will get there. And if it does, you will be amazed.

Blurb

In 2014, two experimental viruses—a genetically engineered flu strain designed by Dr. Alexander Kellis, intended to act as a cure for the common cold, and a cancer-killing strain of Marburg, known as "Marburg Amberlee"—escaped the lab and combined to form a single airborne pathogen that swept around the world in a matter of days. It cured cancer. It stopped a thousand cold and flu viruses in their tracks.

It raised the dead.

Millions died in the chaos that followed. The summer of 2014 was dubbed "The Rising," and only the lessons learned from a thousand zombie movies allowed mankind to survive. Even then, the world was changed forever. The mainstream media fell, Internet news acquired an undeniable new legitimacy, and the CDC rose to a new level of power.

Set twenty years after the Rising, the Newsflesh trilogy follows a team of bloggers, led by Georgia and Shaun Mason, as they search for the brutal truths behind the infection. Danger, deceit, and betrayal lurk around every corner, as does the hardest question of them all:

When will you rise?

Other reviews you might be interested in

• Review: Alienation by Jon S. Lewis (4/5 Stars)
• Review: Bumped by Megan McCafferty (2/5 Stars)
• Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (5/5 Stars)

More links

• Author page
• Press
• Goodreads