Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is an almost-standalone horror book by the author of several other horror books (and many non-horror books). There is a prequel novella, but it's almost impossible to get (only US-region ebooks are currently obtainable, as far as I can tell) and isn't required reading. I suspect Into the Drowning Deep spoils the impact of the novella too, but that's just a guess. (I would still read the novella if I could.)

Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.

Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

Having read two Mira Grant series before, I had some idea of what to expect from this book, style-wise. I got the horrifying mermaids I expected, complete with a relatively plausible explanation for their existence, including comparisons with other marine creatures. I'm not a marine biologist by any stretch of the imagination, but Grant's explanations of these sorts of things always come across and quite plausible or just a few steps away from reality, which makes them creepier.

There several interesting point of view characters in this book. Since it's a horror book, I found myself wondering which of them (if any) would survive until the end, which was a significant source of the tension in the book. It's hard to care very much about nameless background characters having their faces eaten off, but a lot more stressful when it's one of the characters you've become attached to. Also, after the initial wave of deaths, Grant found increasingly interesting ways to off people, which kept things interesting more than I would have expected — since they were also an excuse to further develop the world building.

If you've enjoyed other Mira Grant books, you will probably enjoy this one. If you have a phobia of water or the open ocean etc, this will probably be even scarier for you. Proceed with caution. (But as a note, I read the book far from the coast and it didn't really faze me. I might have found it a little more concerning if I had been able to see the sea.) I am keen to read the prequel novella if I can, even though it's contents are made pretty obvious from the content of this book. I will continue keeping an eye out for future books by Mira Grant.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published:
Series: Yes. There is a prequel novella, Rolling in the Deep, which I haven't read because it's basically impossible to get outside of the US.
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Kobo

Final Girls by Mira Grant

Final Girls by Mira Grant is a science fiction horror novella from the Seanan McGuire pseudonym that brought us the Newsflesh and Parasitology series. It's not set in either of those universes, however, and in my opinion is a bit more firmly rooted in the horror genre than either.

What if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?

Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they’ve been missing their whole lives—while running from the bogeyman through a simulated forest. But…can real change come so easily?

Esther Hoffman doubts it. Esther has spent her entire journalism career debunking pseudoscience, after phony regression therapy ruined her father’s life. She’s determined to unearth the truth about Dr. Webb’s budding company. Dr. Webb’s willing to let her, of course, for reasons of her own. What better advertisement could she get than that of a convinced skeptic? But Esther’s not the only one curious about how this technology works. Enter real-world threats just as frightening as those created in the lab. Dr. Webb and Esther are at odds, but they may also be each other’s only hope of survival.

As described in the blurb, the story of Final Girls follows Esther, a reporter who is covering a radical new psychological (/psychiatric since there are drugs involved?) therapy using an advanced form of virtual reality — so advanced, it incidentally includes the ability for outsiders to look at people's dreams while they're in the system. Esther has been chosen for the job because of a past that makes her especially sceptical of the lofty claims made by Dr Webb's organisation. Dr Webb, meanwhile, just wants to convince her of the efficacy of the system, using whatever means necessary. Things fall into horror when outside forces throw carefully laid plans awry.

This isn't a lengthy read but it is a very tense and interesting one. Midway through the book I was honestly unsure whether our protagonists would survive the ordeal and was wondering how the story would end. The fact that the reader is given more information than some of the characters — who have no way of knowing what's happening outside of the virtual reality — significantly adds to the tension. About half the story takes place in a virtual world and those scenes are easily differentiated from the real world scenes through the use of a different font, making the delineations quite clear.

Final Girls was an excellent read and I recommend it to fans of science fiction and horror. Being a novella it's also a quick read but one that will not leave you disappointed. I look forward to reading more of Mira Grant's work in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: late April 2017, Subterranean Press
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via Netgalley

Paused no longer: a recap of the last 3.5 months

Happy New Year, my lovely readers!

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I said I would probably be back in 2017, and I am. Turns out what I needed wasn't so much a break from blogging per se, but a break from feeling obliged to read. And the space to be completely unproductive in my spare time. Or something. 2016 was hard and often crappy. Here's hoping that 2016 is an improvement.

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In the last few months of 2016 I did not read very many books. I watched rather a lot of K-dramas and played rather a lot of board games. In total I ended up only reading 71 books in 2016. Most of them in the first half of the year. Here's a chart:

I was in Sweden for the first three months of the year, Australia for the second three months and Belgium for most of the last six months. Make of that what you will. Though I did end up seeing in the new year in Melbourne. Also, this year has had 3 summers and 3 winters, more or less. If a seasonal body clock was a thing, mine would be very confused.

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Anyway, I wanted to say a bit about the books I read that didn't get reviews. Two of the books I read I did review and those will be going up in the next few days. I will skip those now. The other books I read were:

• Of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists by JK Rowling
• Of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies by JK Rowling
• Chimera by Mira Grant
• Skin by Ilka Tampke
• Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
• Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secretes Illustrated Edition by JK Rowling
• Seeing Red (Ambassador 1) by Patty Jansen
• Daughters of the Storm by Kim Wilkins — review coming
• Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall — review coming

The two Hogwarts books were interesting and pretty much what I expected after reading the first one. I live in hope that one day we'll get a complete (paper) edition of all the worldbuilding and backstory that JK didn't put into the actual books. I suppose for now that's on hold because of the Fantastic Beasts movies.

Chimera by Mira Grant was the conclusion to the Parasitology which I enjoyed and which was a satisfying conclusion. When I finished it, I contemplated trying to write a review and found that I didn't have much to say that I hadn't either said in a review of the first two books or that wasn't a spoiler. So. Read that series if you like SF horror and don't mind reading about a tapeworm apocalypse. Or if you liked Newsflesh but thought there was too much US politics in it.

Skin by Ilka Tampke was a gorgeous historical fantasy set in pre-Roman Britain and featuring such side characters as Taliesin. It's probably the book I regret not reviewing the most, but it didn't happen at the time and now it's too late. It was really good, though, and I am very much looking forward to reading the sequel when it comes out (later this year, I hope). The review should have also counted towards my Australian Women Writers Challenge. Alas.

Romancing the Inventor and Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger were romance novellas set in the Soulless/Finishing School universe. The first featuring a long-awaited f/f HEA for Genevieve and the latter featuring Preshea and showing us that she's not all bad, despite being Saphronia's school antagonist. Both were fun reads, as one would expect from Carriger. Read them if you have enjoyed either of her series. I look forward to more novellas to come.

The Illustrated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling and Jay Kay was, obviously, the same story we all know and love with the addition of gorgeous artwork. I enjoyed it, but I think I liked the illustrations in Philosopher's Stone more. Maybe that was just because they were more novel, though. I did discover that you can line up the Diagon Alley illustrations from the two books and get a super long Diagon Alley, so that was cool.

Seeing Red by Patty Jansen is a science fiction novel I've been meaning to read for ages and finally got around to. I enjoyed it but didn't feel a burning need to read the sequel immediately. I am actually more keen to read Soldier's Duty, which is set in the same world but a different time period.

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And as for reading goals this year. Well. I want to avoid burning out again and don't want to put too much pressure on myself and risk enjoying the reading less. Right now, it's important to me to actually enjoy the things I do since a lot of 2016 wasn't enjoyable. (Don't get me wrong, there were high points like the release of Defying Doomsday, finishing my PhD and seeing friends.) But at the same time I'm not ready to completely give up the blog. So my goal is going to be to read and review at least one book a week. I toyed with choosing a day to regularly post the review, but I'm not sure what will end up working best. Also, I hope to read more that that, but that's the bare minimum I will not hate myself for meeting. Or something.

In the meantime, keep and eye out for a few reviews next week. Two from last year and one that I've got a head start on since I ended the year very close to the end of An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows.

Oh, and one more resolution: I plan to put down books I'm not enjoying more easily. More DNF and less feeling guilty about it. Something I've been trying to work towards for a few years now. Which means that right now I'm going to do a purge of my currently reading lists on LT and GR and move the books I'm halfway through to a DNF shelf in iBooks. Cue determination.

How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea by Mira Grant

How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea by Mira Grant is another novella set in the Newsflesh universe. It is set well and truely after the trilogy and, since it features a major secondary character, I definitely do not recommend reading it if you haven't read the whole trilogy, unless you really like spoilers (although I suspect the spoilers won't make much sense if you haven't read the series, so there's also that). Here is my review of Feed, the first book in the Newsflesh trilogy.

Post-Rising Australia can be a dangerous place, especially if you're a member of the government-sponsored Australia Conservation Corps, a group of people dedicated to preserving their continent's natural wealth until a cure can be found. Between the zombie kangaroos at the fences and the zombie elephant seals turning the penguin rookery at Prince Phillip Island into a slaughterhouse, the work of an animal conservationist is truly never done--and is often done at the end of a sniper rifle.

Aside from generally liking Grant's work, I picked up this novella in particular because it's set in Australia (and I'm Australian, in case you missed that). The latter also accounts for my mixed response to the novella. On the one hand, zombie kangaroos held back by the (upgraded) Rabbit-Proof Fence is pretty awesome, as were the occasional zombie wombat and koala. On the other hand, there were a lot of minor elements that just didn't feel properly Australian.

A large part of this is accounted for by the fact that the story is narrated a Pom in Australia and yet is written in American English. About the only saving grace was that when the Aussies spoke, they at least spelled "arse" correctly. But no one even called Mahir a Pom, which was pretty weird give how irreverent and teasing they were otherwise. Also, at one point they were running through a forest instead of the bush, which felt incredibly wrong since the only forests we have in Australia are rainforests, and they certainly weren't in one of those. There was also a pervading sense of not being quite right, which was harder to pin down.

A key aspect of the plot was conservation and protecting various Australian animals from extinction, which kind of made sense, given how much of this is currently going on. It was a little weird thinking of kangaroos as endangered since currently most (?) species are not, to the point where they need to be culled regularly to prevent mass-starvation. But it definitely felt right when thinking about all our cute fuzzy animals which are endangered by varying degrees of severity.

The road trip they take near the start of the novella actually followed a road I myself drove along recently... which had me wondering where all the cows and sheep had gone. Presumably they were all exterminated post-Rising (and if memory serves, no one eats mammals anymore), but a mention of empty farmland or an abundance of crops in the place of stock would not have gone amiss. It was just another of those little markers of inauthenticity.

But overall, I liked the novella. I would recommend How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea to fans of Mira Grant, with the caution that if you're a stickler for authentic Australian settings, it might annoy you a little bit. On the other hand, it's not like everything was wrong, so I expect many people will be quite happy with the level of Australian-ness. And remember, there are many spoilers if you haven't read the entire Newsflesh trilogy.

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2013, Orbit
Series: Newsflesh, a spin-off novella set after the main trilogy
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Google Play

Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus by Mira Grant

Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus by Mira Grant is a Newsflesh novella, set in the same world as Feed and sequels. I admit I mainly picked up this specific Mira Grant novella because of the title. I was justified in my choice when the octopus's eyes on the cover came up under the transparent loading symbol on my iPad, making them appear to flash just before the book opened.

As Dr. Abbey knows, there are difficulties in running an underground virology lab in a post-Rising America. 

And unwanted guests must be dealt with.

This book is set after the Newsflesh trilogy, I'm pretty sure. It's been a while since I read it, but from memory, it's definitely set after the second book, and probably after the third. My point being, don't read this if you don't want to be spoiled for the later Newsflesh books. Some of the most important later events are spoiled in this novella.

Warnings aside, I enjoyed this novella. The strangest thing was confusing which Mira Grant world I was reading in near the start. The main character reminded me a bit of a character in Parasite and Symbiont, so my mind kept drifting over into that world until zombies became more prominent. Obviously this won't be a problem for everyone, and was mainly an issue for me because I read those books more recently.

The main character — telling the story in first person — is a mad scientist running an illegal private lab during the zombie post-apocalypse. Her life involves paperwork, making sure the research is going to plan, and toying with the CDC plants/spies sent her way. But then a different spanner is thrown into the works, proving to be more than just a hiccup for her to overcome. It was the kind of story where the initial setup is interesting by itself, but the additional complication pushes it into even better storytelling territory. My one complaint is that the titular octopus didn't play a larger role.

This was a fun novella that I would highly recommend to all fans of the the Newsflesh universe. It's fairly different (other than the setting) to the trilogy, mainly because there is not journalism or politics. It probably is more similar in style to the Parasite books, despite being set in a different universe. I want to recommend it to people who haven't read the Newsflesh books, but I hesitate because of the spoilers for the trilogy.

4.5 / 5

First published: 2015, Orbit
Series: Newsflesh universe, a novella best read after the main trilogy
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Google Play

Symbiont by Mira Grant

Symbiont by Mira Grant is the sequel to Parasite, which I reviewed in late 2013, and the second book in the Parasitology trilogy (well, I assume it's a trilogy). This review (and also the blurb) contains spoilers for the first book.

The SymboGen designed tapeworms were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts turning them into a ravenous horde.

Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the tapeworms are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is, and how they can be stopped.

Honestly, that's not a great blurb. I've read worse, but it does skip over a lot of relevant nuance in the story. The parasite-induced zombie apocalypse was getting starting in the first book, but now it's in full swing. One thing I found both refreshing and interesting is how different this apocalypse is to Mira Grant's other series, Newsflesh.

Sal, the main character, came to the realisation at the end of Parasite that she was not entirely the human person she thought she was. In Symbiont, she starts off still coming to terms with what that means. The book is told mainly in first person and to show us what's going on outside of Dr Cale's lab, Sal gets into a lot of trouble that takes her to a variety of places. It's more plausible in context than I may have just made it sound, and does get around the need to provide the same background information solely in quotes and journal entries.

Symbiont introduces some new characters, two of whom particularly caught my attention. There was Ronnie, a human-tapeworm chimaera that Sal encounters at one point. The tapeworm part of Ronnie has been transplanted several times and is now residing in an adolescent black girl. But Ronnie started life as an implant for a male trucker and the worm part of him remembers this and feels entirely not at home in the girl's body. Basically, it's an interesting representation of a trans chimaera. Since the tapeworms themselves are hermaphroditic, chimaera gender comes from the interplay between the tapeworm and human elements of the person. Which I found interesting.

The other new character that caught my attention was Fishy, a lab tech recruited by Dr Cale. His backstory is that when the apocalypse struck, his wife went zombie and tried to kill him. Since then he's suffered a break from reality and thinks he's dreaming a very realistic video game. On the one hand, it's a plausible coping mechanism, and on the other hand, he provides sort of "fourth wall" commentary on events. (What's the book equivalent of breaking the fourth wall?) My favourite line was about the zombies having been "conceived by a creative team with an obsession for body horror". And the bits where he was talking about boss fights.

So, if you enjoyed Parasite, I definitely recommend reading Symbiont. It does suffer a little bit from middle book syndrome, but if you're invested in the story already, it's a nice volume that pushes the plot along. I am looking forward to book three coming out late this year (and I just saw the awesome cover for it; I really like the design aesthetic they've gone with for this series). I don't recommend starting with Symbiont, but I do recommend the series to fans of medical, apocalyptic and mild horror science fiction.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: November 2014, Orbit
Series: Parasitology book 2 of 3
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Google Play

Parasite by Mira Grant

Parasite by Mira Grant is the first book in a new series by the author of the Newsflesh trilogy. It's set in a different world with a completely different threat but it many ways it's similarly written. I expect fans of the Newsflesh books will enjoy it. Also, how freaking awesome is the cover?

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.

We owe our good health to a humble parasite — a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.

But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives...and will do anything to get them.

The story in Parasite is about Sal, who had a car accident six years ago, was declared brain dead and then woke up from her coma just when her parents had agreed to turn off the life support. But Sal doesn't remember anything about her life before the accident and had to learn how to live (talk, walk, be a functioning member of society) from scratch. The good news was that because it was her SymboGen implant that miraculously saved her, SymboGen has been footing the bill for all her medical treatment and rehabilitation (not an insignificant boon, given the US health system, heh).

So Sal is happy with her life working in an animal shelter and (slightly less happy with) having regular tests and shrink appointments. But then an epidemic breaks out. People start contracting the "sleeping sickness" and acting like sleepwalkers or zombies (I think Grant is fond of zombies...). No one knows what's causing the sleeping sickness and, more worryingly, the news isn't reporting anything about it either. Sal and her boyfriend (who is also a parasitologist) get caught up in trying to work out what's going on with the sleeping sickness and why it's being hushed up.

I really enjoyed Parasite. Sal is an interesting character with lots of little quirks that were well thought through, for example her anxiety around cars. There was one aspect of the plot (which I can't be specific about because spoilers) that was a bit too coincidental, but the characters in the story were quick to comment on the coincidence, making it more believable.

One really interesting aspect (and this paragraph is going to contain a really minor spoiler) is that about half way through Sal (and the reader) learns something very shocking, so shocking that she blocks it out. It was interesting how different characters reacted to her denial and how her own thought-processes worked around it.

Overall, Parasite was an enjoyable read that was difficult to put down (and can be blamed for keeping me awake reading). I'd call it a medical thriller and similar to the Newsflesh books, but not as violent and bloody (a bit gory and there was more vomiting than I would've liked but one must expect these sorts of things in this sort of book). For those readers wondering whether it's for the faint of heart, I'd say it's borderline. The characters (and the dogs) were the real highlights which made Parasite a pleasure to return to. I am very eagerly awaiting the next book in the series (oh, and although the story isn't finished in Parasite, it also isn't a cliffhanger, which I'm sure will make some readers happy). I strongly recommend Parasite to fans of Mira Grant and medical thrillers.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: November 2013, Orbit
Series: Yes. Parasitology book 1 of ? (probably a trilogy, I would guess)
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Countdown by Mira Grant

Countdown by Mira Grant is a novella set in the same universe as her Newsflesh trilogy. You can read my reviews of the trilogy at the following links:

• Feed (book 1)
• Deadline (book 2)
• Blackout (book 3)

Countdown tells the story of the causes of the Rising — the development and spread of the viruses that became Kellis-Amberlee, the zombie pandemic. This review contains mild spoilers which are only really spoilers if you haven't read any of the Newsflesh books.

The novella doesn't contain spoilers for the main series, so could be read beforehand. However, it definitely fleshes out a lot of the back story, so I think a reader will get more out of it if they have read the Newsflesh trilogy.

There's no main character in Countdown. Instead, it tells the story through scenes about different characters: the two doctors who created the two parts of the virus, the Amberlee family, the Masons who we know from Newsflesh (and actually their story was the one I felt relied most on the reader's knowledge of the future, although not too heavily), CDC researchers, the people responsible for releasing the Kellis cure into the wild. Even though I knew the final outcome (dooooom), If found it interesting to follow.

The one thing I was hoping it would address but didn't was how the entire rest of the world (outside the US) got Kellis-Amberlee. I have no issues with the Kellis part because of how it was released, but the Marburg Amberlee part still doesn't make sense to me. It was a cancer cure undergoing trials in Denver. By itself it wasn't very contagious and Kellis-Amberlee started in the trial patients and their closest friends and relatives. Kellis-Amberlee was highly contagious, but it also acted quite quickly (making people sick then dead then zombies). So HOW did it get out of the US in large enough numbers to infect the whole world? A plane full of dead/zombies wouldn't do it because of all the red flags it would raise upon landing (assuming the pilot survived which isn't implausible given current aeroplane safety procedures). The novella mentioned people in the UK and India getting Kellis-Amberlee but how? Just the Marburg Amberlee part couldn't've reached them and KA needs reasonably close contact and also those places are far from the US and it takes more time to get there than the time needed to zombify. There wasn't much mention of KA lying dormant while being passed around which is the thing that needed to be emphasised to make me happy.

OK, that was a bit ranty, but it was the aspect that bothered me in the trilogy and that I was so hoping would be explained in Countdown.

But nitpicking aside, this was an enjoyable story. I definitely recommend it to anyone whose read Newsflesh and is interested in filling in some of the worldbuilding gaps.

4 / 5 stars

Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout by Mira Grant is the final novel in the Newsflesh trilogy. I have previously reviewed book 1: Feed, and book 2: Deadline.

This review contains spoilers for the ending of Deadline. If you haven’t read the first two books, I suggest reading the review for Feed and then reading the book yourself. The series is definitely worth reading.

Spoilers below.

Deadline by Mira Grant

Deadline is the second book in Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. You can read my review of the first book, Feed, here. If you haven’t read Feed, I highly recommend not reading this review because it contains spoilers for the end of book 1.

Short Stories

"In The Tide" by Linda Nagata

“In The Tide” by Linda Nagata

An interesting story about rogue nanobots, Saturn and genetically engineered humans. Set in a space faring world still confined to the solar system, it was nice to see some hard SF eschewing interstellar travel. You can download it free from Smashwords.

"Loss Leader" by Simon Haynes

“Loss Leader” by Simon Haynes

A story which originally appeared in an early edition of ASIM (which makes me feel like I should’ve read it before, but apparently I missed that issue). What happens when a company spends piles of money on a spaceship filled with cryogenically frozen settlers that the settlers aren’t keen on boarding? You treat the mission as a loss leader, of course. A bleakly amusing tale. You can download it free from Smashwords.

"The Rebelliousness of Trassi Udang"

“The Rebelliousness of Trassi Udang” by Patty Jansen

This is a slightly dark and sinister story set on a space station with a large Indonesian population. In the background there is war, in the foreground minor rebellion. A well drawn world and a great read. You can download it for free from Smashwords.

"Fed" by Mira Grant

“Fed” by Mira Grant


This isn’t strictly speaking a short story but an alternate ending to Mira Grant’s novel Feed. It’s how things would have played out if one event near the end had happened differently. If you’ve read Feed you can probably guess which event. It’s understandably a little rougher than the finished novel (and somewhat lacking in characterisation where points of view have changed from the original), but still harrowing. You can read or download it (PDF link hidden at the bottom) on this Orbit page.

Feed by Mira Grant

Feed by Mira Grant is a novel I picked up earlier this year and left lying around on my ereaders while I was distracted by other things. Now that I’ve read it, I wish I didn’t have to read two more books before buying the sequel.

This was a book that snuck up on me. It started interestingly enough and for a while I wasn’t sure what the main action was going to be. Then, in the last 20–30%, the action picked up and didn’t slow down until the very end. I didn’t take many breaks while reading the first part, but for that last part I could not put it down.

Twenty years after the zombies started rising, humanity endures. During the Rising the media as we know it today fell on its face in a few ways and bloggers rose to feed the public’s demand for truth (and sensationalism). As journo bloggers, Georgia, Shaun and Buffy run around looking for news and sometimes poking dead things with sticks (that’s mostly Shaun). At the start of the novel, they’re chosen by one of the Republican presidential candidates to follow him on the campaign trail in the lead up to the primaries. Drama (and zombies) ensues.

When I finished it, I wanted to give Feed five stars (which I reserve for my absolute favouritest books — they go in the side bar) but after some reflection there were some things which bothered me but which the awesomeness of the last part distracted me from.

Firstly, it’s a book about the US presidential elections making it, obviously, very US-centric. That’s fine but there were some parts where there was assumed knowledge which I’m sure USian readers would know but that went a bit over my head. And I say that as someone reasonably well informed (US elections are probably the ones I know the second most about, after Australian ones) but who couldn’t look up some references while reading (because I had no internet at the time). So, for example, this was the first time I’d heard about Super Tuesday. It was explained enough for the story to make sense, but I couldn’t help but feel more background knowledge (or slightly more explanation) would have helped.

I also really want to know how, if the zombie apocalypse started in the US, the entire rest of the world also became infected. Once people realised what was going on, it doesn’t seem like it would be hard to keep relatively isolated countries like Australia (or at least Tasmania…) and New Zealand clean. And if the outbreak started in the US, wouldn’t it be the hardest hit? How can it still be “the greatest country on Earth”? I suspect some of these questions are addressed in the related novellas Countdown and San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, which are set at the time of the Rising and which I look forward to reading.

I very much enjoyed Feed and I look forward to reading the rest of the series. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes zombies, post-apocalypic stories, near-future SF or political or epidemic thrillers. It’s definitely a worthy read.

4.5 / 5 stars