Feed, by Mira Grant
So the other day I picked up Feed for the Kindle, because (a) it's up for a Hugo, why not?, (b) the beginning is set in Santa Cruz, and (c) Amazon had it for $3, which I thought was pretty good. (You can also get N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for $3, and I grabbed that too, but I have heard faily things about it so I decided to read it second. And I don't know if it's still on sale -- I am having strange DNS errors and can't check -- but the first of Iain Banks' Culture novels was pretty cheap about a month ago.)
Anyway. Novels about zombies are not generally my thing. Political blogs are really not my thing. Therefore, when I say that I was absolutely glued to a book in which zombies in a near-future world try to eat hip young political bloggers, I say it with a certain amount of... bewilderment. Also praise. Because it's really really good. Gripping, in fact. Could not put it down. (Feed also gets points for its cover, because really? The RSS logo done in dripping blood is a pretty cool idea, honestly.)
It's first-person, and it does a little too much telling and not showing (although I'm willing to accept this as a deliberate way of writing a blogger character), but the plot is good and it certainly does a good job instilling terror at the idea of living in a zombie-filled world even (or maybe especially) with all this technology, and there are some fun thinky hard-SF bits about epidemiology and how the zombie thing works as a virus. Sadly, the bit about it being in Santa Cruz at the beginning mostly read as OUR PLACE NAME IS PASTEDE ON YAY and not very believably SC. Or Watsonville or Aptos or Berkeley. There were a couple good lines about Sacramento, though.
Still, it was a good read and now I think I might have to buy the second one when it comes out next month, which is of course the goal, right?
Also: zombie palominos.
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Anyway. Novels about zombies are not generally my thing. Political blogs are really not my thing. Therefore, when I say that I was absolutely glued to a book in which zombies in a near-future world try to eat hip young political bloggers, I say it with a certain amount of... bewilderment. Also praise. Because it's really really good. Gripping, in fact. Could not put it down. (Feed also gets points for its cover, because really? The RSS logo done in dripping blood is a pretty cool idea, honestly.)
It's first-person, and it does a little too much telling and not showing (although I'm willing to accept this as a deliberate way of writing a blogger character), but the plot is good and it certainly does a good job instilling terror at the idea of living in a zombie-filled world even (or maybe especially) with all this technology, and there are some fun thinky hard-SF bits about epidemiology and how the zombie thing works as a virus. Sadly, the bit about it being in Santa Cruz at the beginning mostly read as OUR PLACE NAME IS PASTEDE ON YAY and not very believably SC. Or Watsonville or Aptos or Berkeley. There were a couple good lines about Sacramento, though.
Still, it was a good read and now I think I might have to buy the second one when it comes out next month, which is of course the goal, right?
Also: zombie palominos.
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
