 Blackout by Mira Grant
Published by Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette
Blackout is the third book in the Feed trilogy and, as such, this review contains spoilers for the previous books in the series, Feed and Deadline.
Everything started going wrong when After the End Times followed the Ryman presidential campaign. Now they’re on the run, hunted down by the CDC. Actually, Shaun and his team are being hunted. His sister, Georgia, is dead. Well, she was dead. Now she’s alive again in a CDC facility. Sort of alive. Actually, she’s a clone, and not the first one they made of the original Georgia Mason, just the most realistic one to date. Can the After the End Times team reunite and break the biggest story of their lives before being take down by the CIA - or by zombie bears?
You GUYS. I preordered Blackout on my Nook. PREORDERED. And then I waited six months to read it. WHY? WHY I ASK YOU? WHY? Okay, but seriously, Blackout was perhaps my favorite of all of the books in the Feed trilogy, despite the fact it had been 18 months (and, oh, 300 books) since I had read any of the previous installments in the trilogy, so I had forgotten things.
But really, this is quite possibly the best book in the Feed trilogy. I adored the first one for the world building more than anything else (well, that and the politics and blogging angle…okay, I really just liked it a bunch in general), but even though Grant plays with her reader’s brains and sense of right and wrong, Blackout is just amazing. It all works, it all comes together. It also makes me want to go back and reread this entire series from the beginning, including the prequel novellas and the novella that is chronologically between Feed and Deadline. And then I want to sit patiently at Mira Grant (a pen name of Seanan McGuire)’s feet and wait for her to write more zombie things.
I love when the end of a trilogy validates my having started the trilogy in the first place, and Blackout does that in spades. Very highly recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*
Source: Personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
 Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2012
Zombiestan by Mainak Dhari, narrated by John Lee
Published in audio by Tantor Media, published in print by TK
Synopsis:
It begins with an airstrike on a Taliban compound where new biological weapons are being stored. The initial response to the strike is unabashed joy, finally the US military has taken out some of the top members of the Taliban, certainly now that the leadership is dead, the group will fall apart. Soon, though, the allegedly dead Taliban are ravishing villages, storming US military compounds. Shooting them does nothing, nor does attempting to blow them up, and anyone they bite or scratch gets terribly sick and begins acting in the same mad way. Thanks to the soldiers who are on their way home, and the ones who are taken out of country for medical care, the epidemic begins to spread throughout the world, although it seems to be worst in the Middle East.
It is against this backdrop that our unlikely band of protagonists comes together in India. They include a Navy SEAL, an aging romance author, a teenage boy who has lost his family, and a teenage girl with her toddler brother in tow. During an attack by the “biters,” as they are being called, it becomes evident that the young boy is somehow immune to these strange zombies, a discovery that provides hope to survivors and enrages the creatures at the same time. Suddenly, there is more at stake that minute-to-minute survival, the fate of the human race may lie with a little boy obsessed with Disney.
Thoughts on the story:
With Zombiestan, Dhar introduces a new an interesting twist to the classic zombie story. Unlike most zombies, Dhar’s biters move quickly, possess rudimentary group memories from the original Taliban victims, and even seem capable of learning. These deviations from classic zombie lore kept Zombiestan fresh, aided by the quick pace and the engaging plot. The men were better developed than the women as characters, but the women still formed an integral part of the plot, and were able to play a significant role in the group’s quest to get to someone who could do something with the possibility of immunity. Zombiestan is very engaging, and incredibly easy to get caught up in.
Thoughts on the audio production:
Ah, John Lee. I haven’t listened to very many things he has narrated, so I tend to forget just how amazing he is; after all, he did manage to keep me grounded during The City & The City. In Zombiestan, he shows his exceptional talent with accents. Lee himself is British, and narrated the book as such, which works for something set in the Middle East and India. However, he had a variety of accents to cover among the different characters, primarily Indian and American. The main characters occasionally came into contact with others from the region, and Lee managed to switch voices and accents with a seemingly effortless flair.
Overall:
Zombiestan is a captivating and unique zombie story, which is truly brought to its fullest potential by John Lee’s expert narration. Very highly recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*
I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.
Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2012
 Zone One by Colson Whitehead
Published by Doubleday Books, an imprint of Random House
Everyone has a Last Night story, and now that the world is rebuilding, people have the time and energy to share them. The man now nicknamed Mark Spitz has even figured out different levels of his Last Night story to tell depending on his acquaintance with the listener. The government in Buffalo is looking to the future, though, and part of that means reviving New York City. Mark Spitz is part of a team of civilian sweepers clearing New York of the last few remaining straggler zombies.
Zone One is, without a doubt, the most introspective of the zombie novels I have read. Mark spends a good deal of time dwelling in the past, resulting in occasionally choppy transitions between the present zombie search-and-destroy mission and the past, both before and after the traumatic events of Last Night (Mark, like essentially every other survivor has PASD: Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder). Interestingly, actual zombies played a relatively small role in Zone One, Spitz comes into contact with them only rarely, either in the present or in his memories, with Whitehead focusing more on the psyche of the survivor than the actual end of the world.
This is a fascinating approach to a post-apocalyptic novel, but it is one that would have worked better had Mark Spitz been a more compelling character. Certainly part of the issue is the stress disorder associated with the end of the world, something like that does not make for a terribly personable character. Spitz’s extreme mediocrity is drilled into the reader, however. We are told over and over that he is exactly average, even painfully average, never any grade but a B, never excelling in any way, other than perhaps his aim in killing zombies. The real problem is that Colson Whitehead - 2002 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship - doesn’t write ‘extremely average’ well, as is evidenced by this reminiscence of Mark’s about the apparent normalcy of his home on Last Night:
Normal was the unbroken idyll of life before. The present was a series of intervals differentiated from each other only by the degree of dread they contained. The future? The future was the clay in their hands.
A thoughtful and beautiful passage, to be sure, but not one that is particularly believable from the head of someone without any great mental ability. Passages like this are also not rare, one could open to almost any page and find one. This fairly significant flaw in characterization makes Spitz a two-dimensional and therefore less interesting character, which in turn lessens the emotional impact of the attempted rebuilding of our world after devastation by such an insidious plague.
All this being said, Colson Whitehead’s general depiction of life after zombies seems to be almost painfully on cue, from the cheesy, manipulative symbols put out by the government in Buffalo to the ability of those with significant personal problems to detach from the danger in their everyday lives in order to focus on sensationalized stories, such as a the survival of a set of triplets in a far-off survivor camp.
Zone One is certainly an interesting and realistic take on a post-apocalyptic world, but an unbelievable protagonist makes it less successful than it might otherwise be, and some fans of zombie lit may be surprised and disappointed by the near lack of zombies.
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*
Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
R has always been a bit different than his zombie friends - if you can call them that - trying harder than most of them to hang onto his pre-zombie identity. So, perhaps it makes sense that it was R who managed to take in and keep the memories of a dying boy at the same moment that he was feasting upon his brains. R’s victim was in love with a girl named Julie, a girl who was in the same room, under the same attack, but somehow R manages to save her, and even bring him home with her. Back in the presence of the living in a non-predatory role, R begins to become more sentient, and even win Julie’s affections. How can their love survive, though, when zombies and the living are the most deadly of enemies?
I never expected to be talking about a beautifully written zombie novel, but here I am. At times, Warm Bodies verges on the poetic:
I don’t know why we have to kill people. I don’t know what chewing through a man’s neck accomplishes. I steal what he has to replace what I lack. -p. 8
The writing is lyrical and smart, including literary references to Melville and the Epic of Gilgamesh, not to mention the fact that the whole thing is essentially a post-apocalyptic version of Romeo and Juliet (R and Julie). Part of what is so interesting about Warm Bodies is that the Romeo and Juliet aspect is so subtle. Once you are alerted to it, it becomes obvious - what two groups could be more diametrically opposed than zombies and the living? - but Marion makes the story his own, instead of simply sticking to the story laid down for him by Shakespeare.
I will admit, I was very skeptical about the idea of a sentient, loving zombie, as that seemed to be the antithesis of all things zombie, but Marion makes it work beautifully. Not that there aren’t times where the improbablity of R’s character - even accepting the existence of zombies - can frustrate, but the story and the writing pull the reader through those times.
Highly recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*
Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011
Eat Slay Love by Jesse Petersen
Published by Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette
This is the third book in the Living With the Dead series. My reviews of Married With Zombies and Flip This Zombie.
Sarah and David have survived the zombie apocalypse for longer than really seems possible, particularly since they are traveling and fighting zombies instead of sitting quietly inside a survivor’s community. Now they’re finally approaching the fabled Midwest Wall and possible salvation. Only a few things are slowing them down now: their hitchhikers, a tv tabloid reporter (think TMZ) and a batty aging rocker; David’s odd reaction to the zombie serum he was given in Flip This Zombie; and, of course, the zombies themselves.
The Living With the Dead series exists to entertain, and it does that beautifully. Petersen mixes survival, interpersonal relationships, and government conspiracies adroitly with witty and sarcastic repartee to create a fun and engaging story that will make you alternately laugh and cringe. Is this the book that is going to make you think deeply about the world and your place in it? No, if that is what you want from your zombie books, check out Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series Feed and Deadline, but Eat Slay Love and the entire Living With the Dead series provides very high entertainment value, and for that, I recommend it.
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound.*
Source: Publisher, via Netgalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011
Flip This Zombie by Jesse Petersen
Published by Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette
This is the second book in the Living With the Dead series. My review of Married With Zombies.
Sarah and David are back, and still more or less surviving the zombie apocalypse. With the skills they honed in the early days of the end times, they have actually set up quite a nice little business for themselves, ZombieBusters. There may not be very much cash to be made in the zombie apocalypse, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing at all to be gained.
“We ended up with quite a haul as pre-payment for the bionic zombie job. Two large first aid kits with actual antibiotics ointment (quite the coup because infection took down as many survivors as zombies did by this point) and a three-pack of Ramen. Doesn’t sound like much to you? Well, sit there in your non-zombie paradise and judge then.” -p. 16 (Nook edition)
Things begin to get a little tense, though, when Sarah and David are called out to the outskirts of town by a mysterious note, their services retained by a man who is clearly a mad scientist. David is convinced that his request for ambulatory zombies is related to the rise of so-called super zombies and proof of evil mad scientist status, but Sarah feels their potential reward is greater than the risk, so off they go, hunting for the living undead.
In the same way that Married with Zombies mimicked the style of relationship books, Flip This Zombie ventured into the motivation/job-related self-help realm, with chapter headings like:
“The seven habits of highly effective zombies. Hint: Most of them involve eating your brain.” -p. 132 (Nook edition) - Chapter 14 heading
This worked very well, although it was not quite as entertaining as the marriage advice chapter headings in Married with Zombies, but overall Flip This Zombie was equally as strong as Married with Zombies. I’m very much looking forward to Eat Slay Love, coming out at the end of June. Recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*
Source: Personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011
 Deadline by Mira Grant
Published by Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette
This is the second book in the Newsflesh series. This review will contain spoilers for the first book in the series, Feed.
Since the death of his sister George (Georgia), blogger Shaun Mason doesn’t have much to live for anymore. At this point, the only thing that his keeping him alive at all - and even then, only marginally - is the prospect of revenge, exposing whomever it was who ordered George’s death. The man who was her most immediate cause of death is no more, but Shaun knows there is a conspiracy that set everything up, certainly Tate could not have done everything on its own. This conspiracy seems to reach into the highest echelons of national and international power, and likely even into the CDC - the organization tasked with protecting Americans from the zombie-forming Kellis-Amberly virus, among other things.
Left nearly a metaphorical zombie himself after George’s death - a very dangerous condition, mind you, in the midst of literal zombies - Shaun gets a a jumpstart on life again when a CDC researcher who helped him and George in the past shows up on the doorstep of the After the End Times blog headquarters. Of course, this reanimation almost ends when a massive outbreak of zombies follows close on her heels. With the help of this researcher, herself fearing for her life due to her Kellis-Amberly research, Shaun realizes he might finally have enough information to figure out what happened to George and avenge her death.
It would not be inaccurate to say that Deadline is, more than anything else, a bridge between the first book in the Newsflesh series, Feed, and the third book, Blackout, which will be out in 2012. There are a great number of revelations both about Shaun and Georgia’s early life and their close relationship, and about the nature of Kellis-Amberly and the reality of the epidemic. Certainly things happen - the After the End Times news team does a great deal of traveling and hunting down leads to confirm the truth that is beginning to be unveiled. In addition, there is continued character development, mostly of Shaun, who becomes a much more strongly drawn character than he was in Feed. But primarily, Deadline is setting the scene for Blackout, complete with the traditional mid-series OMG moments.
What is really impressive about Deadline, is that it never feels like filler while you are reading it. All of the hard work that Grant did with world building in Feed helps Deadline feel fully realized. Interestingly, there were not nearly as many run-ins with zombies in Deadline, but this choice made sense for the story that is being told. As in Feed, the zombies are not the point, but more a part of the setting, telling a story of news, blogs, politics, and the culture of fear. It is this that makes the Newsflesh series so successful for me. Grant is using her zombie setting to tell us all a story about ourselves.
Highly Recommended. (Also: I can’t believe I have to wait an entire year to read the third book. This is worse than after I read Catching Fire.)
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*
Source: personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011
 Married with Zombies by Jesse Petersen
Published by Orbit, an imprint of Hachette
Series: Living with the Dead, book 1
Sarah is about ready to kill her husband David. There is basically nothing he does anymore that doesn’t completely annoy her and, it seems, the reverse is true for David of Sarah. They are in couples’ counseling, but it doesn’t really seem to be taking and, in all honesty, they are about one bad cd away from divorce. Until their counseling appointment on August 10th, that is. The first thing that seems off is the traffic, or lack thereof. It is 4:30 in the afternoon in Seattle, after all. Even that, though, it not as strange as walking into your marriage counselor’s office and seeing her eating the couple with the appointment before yours.
It isn’t until they’ve had to kill their therapist and a few other people that Sarah and David start to realize what is going on. As Seattle quickly becomes overrun, they decide it is time to strike out for a place that is less infested with the undead - assuming they can make it out alive.
Funniest. Zombie book. Ever.
Petersen, through her character Sarah, has a fantastic acerbic wit, that made want to just keep turning the pages. Really, what fun is the end of the world if you can’t be sarcastic about it? Well, you know, other than the other obvious benefits:
I should have known that having “end of the world” sex wouldn’t solve our problems. Though, it was pretty great and I highly recommend it. It’s one of the big benefits of an apocalypse that no one tells you about. It just makes everything…better, because you know it might be the last time every time. -p. 64
Perhaps the best part of Married with Zombies, is that Petersen was completely went with the fact that her characters needed major help in the relationship department. Each chapter would begin with a piece of advice straight out of a typical relationship self-help book. Well, straight out with a bit of a zombie apocalypse spin:
Find creative ways to have fun together. Looting is really underrated. -p. 142
This was an incredibly fun and well-done book. If you like to laugh out loud at your zombie apocalypses, this is definitely for you. I’m already planning to read the sequel, and I can’t wait for the third book in the series to come out. Recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound.
Source: personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011
 Feed by Mira Grant, narrated by Paula Christensen and Jesse Bernstein
Synopsis:
Please don’t stop reading this review when I tell you there are zombies.
Georgia and Shaun Mason live in the same world we do, just about 30 years in the future. Twenty-five years after science goes amuck, curing the common cold, but inadvertantly infecting every human being on the planet with a virus that turns them into zombies when they die. At least nobody gets colds anymore. Brother and sister, Georgia and Shaun are licensed bloggers, looking to jump to their own site. Georgia is a newsie, and Shaun is an irwin - the term for the highly adventerous who like to poke zombies with sticks (I can only assume it is a reference to the late Steve Irwin). When Georgia and Shaun learn that they have landed the gig of official bloggers for the presidential campaign of Senator Ryman - a smart, affable man - they figure they have arrived, everything seems to be going right by any standards. Until everything on the campaign starts going wrong, starting with a zombie attack on the Senator’s compound that can only be sabatogue.
Thoughts on the story:
I know, the whole cure colds and create zombies thing sounds a little bizarre when I type it here, but Grant made it seem ever-so-reasonable. Really, A+ for world building. In a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel (I think this definitely leans more towards post-apocalyptic), I have this intense need to understand how exactly the world got the way it has become, I think it has to do with having been a history major. Grant totally came through for me on that. Georgia imparted to me everything I needed or wanted to know about the zombie-filled United States of 30 years from now, but it was done in a way that avoided simply being an information dump. Everything told was relevant to something happening in the story, or would have legitimately been written on her blog.
I completely loved Georgia. She was a really strong female protagonist who managed to seemlessly meld a no-nonsense business attitude with a deep love for her brother and friends and a deep passion for the truth. She also kept the story interesting with her dry humor and her quick (but not too quick) ability to work out what was going on.
Thoughts on the audio production:
Paula Christensen was the perfect choice to narrate Georgia, she absolutely became the character for me. “Feed” was well-suited for audio to begin with, since the entire story is told in first person, but Christensen totally nailed it. I did initially think it odd to have Jesse Bernstein around for what seemed like only narrating his blog posts at the beginning of chapters, but I understand now why that was done and am okay with it, even if it was slightly disconcerting while I was listening.
Overall:
Honestly, “Feed” was everything I had hoped that “The Passage” would be but it wasn’t.
I seriously loved both this story and the audio production. There was just so much energy to it, and the story was so interesting. The zombies were really more of a device to fuel the story about politics and new v. old media and, perhaps partially because I’m already very interested in those things, it totally worked for me. Loved it, can’t wait fo the second book in the trilogy, recommend it highly.
Buy this book from:
Audible: Audio download
Powells: Print*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound: Print*
Amazon: Print*
This review was done with a audio download sent to me for review.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010
 The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
“The Dead-Tossed Waves” is the follow-up to “The Forest of Hands and Teeth,” which I reviewed in September of 2009.
Gabry has spent her life with her mother, Mary, at the lighthouse in Vista where they are in charge of disposing of the Mudo - the things that Mary calls the Unconsecrated - that wash up on the beach. Despite the fact that her world is filled with Mudo (zombies) that want to infect all of humanity, Gabry has a pretty good life; she has family, friends, and perhaps the affection of the boy she likes. Until she agrees to cross the Barrier with a group of friends, and everything changes. Now Gabry must figure out who she really is and what she really wants.
Yay! “The Dead-Tossed Waves” made me so happy! I liked “The Forest of Hands and Teeth” okay. I mean, I appreciated the writing and the basics of the world that Ryan created, but I really wasn’t a huge fan of Mary - I thought she was sort of distant and didn’t ever really get a good feel for her - and I thought that far too many questions about the world went unanswered. Part of that was the design of the storyline, but, honestly, it really bugged me. I like knowing what the rules and history of a world are, even if I don’t find out until the end of the book, not ever finding out is not really an acceptable thing in a book for me. And yet, the not knowing is what drew to me pick up “The Dead-Tossed Waves” even though I wasn’t crazy about “The Forest of Hands and Teeth,” because I had to hope that perhaps some of the questions from the first book were answered.
And they were! Yay! There is a little more that I hope she explores in the next book, but even if this is all that I get I am content. I also have to say, that I found Gabry a much more interesting and likeable character than Mary, perhaps because she was so much more vulnerable. She also developed more as a character than Mary did in “The Forest of Hands and Teeth.” Ryan’s writing is, as ever, quite good, and I was ever so pleased to see more of this post-apocalyptic world she has created. Bring on book three!
Recommended/high recommended.
Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.*
Amazon.*
This review was done with a book received from the library.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010
|
A sample text widget
Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis
euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan.
Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem,
suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.
|
- My Library
- My TBR Calendar
- My Wishlist
Favorite Random Blogs
Obsessively Read Book Blogs
Other Fantastic Book Blogs
|