Mira Grant – Deadline
August 19th, 2011 by Fiona Lorne
Warning: If you have NOT read Feed, do not read this review!
Deadline is the zombie book of 2011, and the political horror-thriller of the year. This is the second book in Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy, and the book is just as strong as, if not stronger, than Feed. The political intrigue that started in Grant’s debut book only gets stronger, deeper, far more complex, and Grant proves that she is a master of the genre. In Deadline, we learn more about how Kellis-Amberlee has developed since the Rising in 2014, and we learn that even when faced with the most uncertain of futures for mankind, people will still think only of themselves.
Shaun Mason returns with his Newsies, Irwins, and Fictionals with a bang. Kelly, a CDC researcher, fakes her own death and shows up on his Oakland doorstep with fascinating news about the virus that lies dormant in everyone, and danger follows immediately behind her, throwing off the fugue Shaun and company have been in since the death of their leader (and Shaun’s sister) Georgia Mason during the Ryman campaign in Feed. The staff of the After the End Times barely manage to stay one step ahead of the people out to completely destroy them, shedding people they love and ideals they hold dear along the way. Life after the Rising doesn’t have much room for people lacking in cynicism, Grant reminds us, and looks can be so very deceptive…
This aspect of the Newsflesh world has a lot of corruption, a very large and brilliant underworld, and the development of Kellis-Amberlee as a manmade abomination of nature is just about impeccable. Additionally, Grant has zero qualms about killing off or otherwise maiming characters that we have grown to love, and Deadline is no exception to the rule. Add in a conspiracy that spans the globe and threatens to take over everything we hold dear, even our own meager existence in a world almost overrun by zombies, and… Well. Mira Grant’s Feed was one of NPR’s top 100 science fiction books of 2010, and Deadline is well on its way to knock Feed out of the water. This scifi tale is more science than fiction, and the world Grant portrays is such a realistic dystopia that it catapults her into a league with Orwell, Bradbury, and Atwood.
If you’re convinced we will engineer our own destruction and bring about the zombie apocalypse, or you wonder if science fixing everything may not be the best idea… I recommend the Newsflesh trilogy. Deadline is the perfect followup to Feed, and Blackout is out June of 2012. Rise up while you can….