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Fantasy. Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:The explosive conclusion to the Newsflesh trilogy from New York Times bestseller Mira Grant — a saga of zombies, geeks, politics, social media, and the virus that runs through them all. The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising. The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. They uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made. Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this: Things can always get worse. More from Mira Grant: Newsflesh Feed Deadline Blackout Feedback Rise Praise for Feed: "It's a novel with as much brains as heart, and both are filling and delicious."?The A. V. Club "Gripping, thrilling, and brutal... McGuire has crafted a masterpiece of suspense with engaging, appealing characters who conduct a soul-shredding examination of what's true and what's reported."?Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “Feed is a proper thriller with zombies.” —SFX.… (more)
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With that said …
I did enjoy having Georgia back, even if was only 97% her. I didn’t buy the science behind her cloning one bit.
The problem with conspiracies is that they rarely make sense, and this one was no exception. I think it got a little too big and convoluted for the author to handle correctly.
BUT… What I’ve always liked about this series is the characters and the way they respond to adversity, and that still holds true in this book. I think it could have been a better story if the author had dropped the CDC conspiracy she created and instead made it a story where the world is confronted with the clone they’ve created. At least then, George’s return would have been necessary.
However this book turned out, whatever Mira Grant comes up with next will certainly be on my to-read list.
This wouldn't be such a huge problem if, say, Shaun had found some way to bring Georgia back. He was motivated to do so, should the means have presented themselves. But it wasn't Shaun who brought Georgia back - it
Now, I actually follow the logic that led the CDC to their state of villainy pretty well. They can't afford a partial cure of Kellis-Amberlee. They see the inevitable result - "Maybe this person can recover from amplification, maybe I shouldn't shoot them in the head, oops, now I'm a zombie too!" - and it is awful. I can see a "cold calculation" (to use Mira Grant's phrase) there, where the CDC believes their way will save more lives in the long run. And it makes sense that once an organization has chosen a direction that requires a lot of lying and secrecy, it will foster a pretty toxic environment where the wrong sort of people will thrive.
So, in a general sense, I get it. And in a general sense, the plot here hangs together pretty well: the After the End Times crew has discovered that the CDC is at the center of a massive, evil conspiracy. They want to end the conspiracy by making it public, making it news. The CDC is strongly motivated to prevent that from happening. The After the End Times crew makes progress. The CDC keeps trying to kill them. Eventually, we have a winner and a loser.
And I thought the first half of the book was pretty awesome. We see Georgia again! She's narrating chapters! Man, it was great to have her back. She is one kick-ass reporter. And all the chapters recounting her captivity at the CDC facility are beyond chilling. The creepy doctor in charge of her, Dr. Thomas, made me want to vomit. Georgia's struggle with her own identity - she's not actually Georgia Mason; just a very close copy - was perfect.
Meanwhile the After the End Times crew hits the road, with Shaun on his way to Florida to save Alaric's little sister from the mosquito-ridden hazard zone the state has become. They run into trouble on the way, and eventually - thanks to an extremely bizarre coincidence that needed a lot more explaining than we actually got - meet up with Georgia.
I loved Shaun's reunion with Georgia. I loved seeing the rest of the crew react to her reappearance. So great. The coolest thing about it? The way that Shaun's behavior in this book cleared up the issues I'd had with DEADLINE. I'd been really uncomfortable with the idea that Shaun communicating with Georgia by magic, and I couldn't figure out how else he could be having such lucid conversations with her.
In BLACKOUT, Mira Grant explains it in a way that I found really satisfying. I liked the explanation - Shaun is just nuts but maybe, just maybe, there was a little possibility to see something more and I was willing to swallow that - but I loved the psychological justification, the way that Georgia's presence in Shaun's mind was revealed as a side of his character that he'd suppressed, a consequence of his co-dependency, maybe even an aid to character growth. A disused part of himself that he'd let wither, because he gave it a name: Georgia.
Unfortunately, after the team is all back together again, the plot completely falls apart. It is a mess. I'm spoiler-tagging this whole review but I'm about to discuss the grand denouement, so this is a cue to stop reading if you haven't read the book yet.
The whole scene with the Monkey made no sense. Not enough explanation for the double crossing (a problem that only gets worse when the CDC guy tries to explain what their game had been). Not enough explanation for the self-sacrificing. The crazy, animal-named characters felt like an little pocket of October Daye had crept into the Newsflesh series, and I'd rather pretend that whole episode just wasn't in the book.
But it's not until they go to Washington that things really fall apart. Our protagonists are ferried to the White House for a villain monologue? What? All of those hints about Rick doing some horrible, unforgivable evil thing and...what is it, exactly? Is he so guilt-ridden about bringing Georgia back? How did he accomplish that? It seemed like the CDC was completely running the show there, so I'm not sure how Rick had enough clout to have Georgia revived.
Are we supposed to believe that Rick suggested the idea, and the CDC only agreed because they planned to run with the 44% version of Georgia? Did Rick know about that too? And then the CDC agreed to have the 97% Georgia introduced to the President anyhow? Because...why? Maybe the CDC figured they'd group them all up and kill them - that was obviously the backup plan - but considering the effort they expended to keep Ryman & Rick biddable, you'd think they'd know better than to introduce new allies, let alone deliver Evil Villain monologues to reporters without a more thorough check for recording devices.
That whole scene was so full of holes and problems I'd go on for pages trying to list them all. So I'll just hop straight to the biggest problem, the one that really decreased my enjoyment of the book: Why did Rick think he needed Georgia at all? The entire scene at the White House, the extraction of the family, the recording of the villain monologue, all of it, could have happened without her. Hell, it could have happened without Shaun or any of the other After the End Times people (though that would require that either the Prez or Vice-Prez come up with a half-dozen solid friends with arms training; seems doable, right?).
I was also pretty disappointed that the ending was so rushed. I wanted to know more about how the country - and the unfettered leaders - tried to deal with the mess they found themselves in. I want to know what their "cold calculations" were. I had a hard time believing that Shaun & Georgia decided that, in their early twenties, it was time to ride off into the sunset and abandon their careers.
On the one hand, I loved BLACKOUT. I love the Newsflesh world, I love the smart, almost brutally no-nonsense writing, I loved having George back, I loved seeing Shaun and George together again - one of my favorite moments in the whole book was when they did their "one, two..." blood-testing routine together for the first time after seeing one another again. That was really moving. I'm so glad they got a happy ending.
On the other hand, the second half of this book was a mess & if it weren't for the first two books in the series, how invested & emotionally wrung out I was by them, I doubt I'd think very much of this one at all.
Mira Grant’s Blackout ends almost exactly where Deadline ended. Georgia — George — Mason has awakened to find that she has made a miraculous recovery from being shot in the
In the meantime, Shaun, George’s adoptive brother and the love of his life (as he is of hers), has proven to be immune to the virus that causes one to become a zombie. He is not the only example of such immunity, which apparently results from sexual contact with someone with a reservoir condition — like George. The key members of Shaun’s media group have gone silent, taking refuge with a rogue lab run by Dr. Abbey when the CDC attempted to kill them. They’ve discovered that Kellis-Amberlee is not always fatal, and the CDC doesn’t want that information to get out. The CDC reasons that if the public knows being bitten by a zombie does not always result in the bitten individual becoming a zombie himself, people will be unable to take the necessary next step (which is to kill the bitten person with a shot to the head, immediately, so that the bitten person cannot go on to bite others). More than that, though, the CDC has discovered the real power that comes from keeping a populace constantly terrified — and it likes it. It has essentially become the government, the primary mission of which has become protecting what remains of the American population from zombies.
Dr. Abbey is a bit of a mad scientist, though, taking insane risks (or asking Shaun’s group to take them) for her experiments in finding a cure for Kellis-Amberlee. She asks Shaun to choose a companion and go to Florida to collect mosquitos, because this is the most frightening thing about Kellis-Amberlee yet: it can now be transmitted by a mosquito bite. This is almost certainly due to human agency. The mosquitos were blown onto the Gulf Coast by a tropical storm, causing the United States government to virtually write off Florida as territory lost to the zombies.
Unfortunately, Shaun is rapidly going insane. He hears George in his head, and his hallucinations are progressing to the visual and tactile. He doesn’t much mind this, as he’d rather be with George in his head if he can’t be with her in the flesh. A sane person wouldn’t want to go to Florida, not when traveling means either being constantly monitored by the government on major highways (which would endanger his chances of surviving the CDC) or traveling zombie-infested back roads (which would endanger his chances of surviving zombies, even with his immunity). But the idea rather appeals to Shaun.
And so we have two narratives, told in the first person in alternating chapters: George and her treatment as a human guinea pig by the CDC, and her attempts to escape; and Shaun’s attempt to get to Florida to help Dr. Abbey cure the plague. The adventure ramps up from there, with the tension constantly increasing, the narrative so compelling that the reader becomes unaware of how rapidly she’s turning the pages or even that she’s holding a book. It’s as if this book is being beamed straight into one’s brain, and one is right there alongside George and Shaun. The narrative is crisp and personal, so well-written that it’s almost impossible to stop reading. The climax is powerful, compelling and utterly satisfying. And, for the second time in the course of this trilogy, Mira Grant once again made me cry for a fictional character — so much so that my husband came running into the room to find out what was wrong. I read a lot, and it’s the rare book that will make me cry; I sure never thought a zombie novel would accomplish it. But Grant’s characters are so fully realized that I simply couldn’t help it.
My only complaint is that Grant never properly explains how the clone of George came to have all of George’s memories, right up to the moment of her death. There is an extent to which this makes sense to the structure of the novel, because neither George nor Shaun has this information, and therefore cannot relay it. It seems that one of the scientists with whom they interact might have that information, though, and it would be absolutely in George’s character to pester the scientists who are experimenting on her until they give her the information, or to otherwise get hold of it. Grant makes some effort at an explanation, but it is incomplete and doesn’t ring true.
Blackout is not a stand-alone novel; you need to read Feed and Deadline first. But that’s okay; you won’t want to miss those two wonderful novels in any event. If you think you’re fed up with zombies, well, I’m right there with you, but you need to make an exception for the NEWSFLESH trilogy. This is adventure science fiction at its very best.
I have to say that while I enjoyed Blackout, I didn’t think it was as good as the first two books and I was not satisfied with the ending. I’m not going to give any spoilers but I can say that the last part of the book wrapped up way to quickly and didn’t make sense to me. This time I know it’s not just me, several other reviewers had the same problem with the end that I did. Also, Shaun was just as annoyingly repetitive in this book as he was in Deadline – constantly reminding us that he’s crazy when his behavior is reminder enough. Finally, there wasn’t as much action or suspense as in the first two books.
If you are a fan of this series, you will want to read this book. You may like it more than I did but even if you don’t it’s still worth reading to find out how everything ends. If you recall, Deadline ended with a doozy of a cliffhanger and it gets addressed right away in Blackout. That storyline was my favorite of this book. It’s hard to say more without spoilers.
I’m looking forward to reading the e-book novellas, I believe one is a prequel and one fits in between Feed and Deadline.
My only complaint is that the ending/climax felt a bit abrupt to
Blackout is told from two alternating points of view, Shaun and George's. This is necessary to get the full experience of both of their situations, but also gave the book a different feel. I like that it almost felt like reading two different books until they met up. I enjoyed seeing their inner mental workings as events progressed; scenes like when George came to terms that she wasn't really the Georgia Mason and what how Shaun's inner George behaved when he saw her again are unique and unexpected. Even though these characters change and go a little crazy and die, both of their goals never change: find out the truth and get it out to the public or die trying. Even when their lives have turned upside down and close friends have died in the process, their goal remains unwavering. Their close knit group of bloggers are like family and they are fiercely loyal. All of these characters are dynamic, interesting, detailed, and, above all, real. I feel for these characters more keenly than most I read and I think it's due to the writing. It can make me sob in public (which I totally did with Feed, in the computer lab at my school; it wasn't pretty) or laugh out loud.
Blackout is a lot different from the other books in the series. It has a less zombie action/carnage, but the action and pacing are not diminished in the least. I found myself trying to read slower only to prolong the reading experience. I would have devoured the book in one sitting if I could. The action scenes are tempered with calm ones in a way that feels organic and fluid. The twists and turns in this book are crazy. Some of them I saw coming, but most caught me by surprise. My only issue with the book is the ease that some situations were resolved. The ending felt an eensy bit less awesome then the last two books, but it may be because it's the last book in the series and there is no needed tension to get to that next book. I am trying really hard not to spoil anything in this book, so I'll just stop gushing here.
The Newsflesh series is one of the best zombie series ever and I'm sad to see it end. I wish I could explore more about this awesome world, but I understand why it ended where it did. So many facets of this universe are explored and explained that it seems like it should take a lot longer than 3 books to do it. Mira Grant/Seanan Mcguire is an amazing author and I will read anything she writes. I will be rereading this series for a long time to come.
The opening page is just one of the best WTF moments I've read in the long time. I couldn't believe she was doing this. And in
Of course it's not perfect. There are a couple of detailed errors that grate, and a few less belivbable plot points, but it's basically niggling. My biggest gripe was the use of jumpers to circumvent an electric fence. This will work, enabling you to cut the fence without triggering the alarm - what it doesn't do is allow you to touch the fence! One of those things that could have been got right equally well, but wasn't. Then there's the whole conspiracy thing - which doesn't really work for me, especially the motivation involved, and the required number of people, but that's more a class failing than a problem with this specific book. Finally of course the whole series suffers from the major plot failing of how they keep power and fancy electronics running throughout all the problems they've had. Infrastructure is hard! But if you forgive these fairly minor points it's great.
The ebb and flow of the pacing is superb, the character banter, motiviation, resources, emotion and just sheer belivablility is wonderful. These really are people you could run away with. The action is tense, without being overly detailed or needlessly graphic. I wasn't that keen on the character swapping between chapters, but they are clearly labelled in the headings which makes it a lot easier.
It's really been a great series, and there are now a few short stories to flesh it out here and there. But I can't see it being continued in a major fashion. Off to go and look up the rest of Mira's (Seanan McGuire) work.
Was it as excellent as it could have been? Not quite... there was just a bit too much "recap" of Shawn's insanity. I think there must have been a couple dozen mentions of how crazy he was and how one didn't recover from insanity in a day. Then at the end, the insanity just disappears, or, at least, it just stops being mentioned and the story goes on.
It also had a bit more feel of a journal-style book than the earlier ones, and we see the same event/time period through the eyes of more than one character via these journal-like entries. It caused the suspense level to suffer a bit, but otherwise, it was a nice way to see what was going on in other people's heads.
Overall it was a believable (and yet, thankfully, still far-fetched) and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.
A great finish to an awesome series. It answers all of the questions I had at the end of Deadline and then some. Awesome!
[Spoiler -- See...as I started reading, I was like "Where the heck is Rick?" and then BAM! There he was. I'm still a little "ew" over the Mason's
I was a little disappointed in the ending, but also disappointed that it is over... SO CONFUSED!
Blackout was also great - it brought the major arcs to a satisfying close. I was not totally a fan of the whole clone subplot - I think it took something away from Feed,
The series was great as a whole, although I think Feed by itself was the finest accomplishment. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.
The trilogy is somewhat in the mode of Max Brooks' World War Z, in that it tells a zombie story at a stage in which humans have survived a near apocalypse and come to figure out how to live despite the present of pressing viral danger.
I listened to the audio book. Good narrators, as usual. Like several books I've read this year, the plot is very engaging (I listened to 17.5 hour audio book in just 3 days), but some minor
Wow. I don't know how much I can say about this one that doesn't involve spoilers.
It was an exciting story, it ties up a lot of loose ends (and explains a large part of the second book). It also introduces zombie bears.
Go read it for yourself. Rise up while you can.
Wow. I don't know how much I can say about this one that doesn't involve spoilers.
It was an exciting story, it ties up a lot of loose ends (and explains a large part of the second book). It also introduces zombie bears.
Go read it for yourself. Rise up while you can.