Feed (Mira Grant)

Feed
The Newsflesh trilogy, Book 1
Mira Grant
Orbit
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: The cure for the common cold, and an end to cancer: two discoveries that would remake human history. Only nobody foresaw the complications when two bioengineered viruses mixed and spread around the globe. Even then, few people believed it - few people except the bloggers who first reported the walking dead rampaging through neighborhoods and cities.
Twenty years later, everything has changed... yet nothing has. A whole generation has grown up with quarantine procedures and routine blood tests, knowing that putting a bullet through a loved one's head can be the greatest act of mercy. Traditional media fell behind, while bloggers have become the most trusted sources of news and entertainment, driven by an endless pursuit of rating shares. Yet, every four years, presidential hopefuls still travel America to drum up support... and, this year, the three bloggers behind the popular After the End Times site have been selected as the press entourage of Senator Ryman on the campaign trail. Siblings Georgia "George" and Shaun Mason and close friend Buffy Meissonier - a truth-tracking Newsie, a thrill-seeking Irwin, and a poetry- and story-crafting Fictional respectively - have been waiting for a break like this, a chance to get into the big leagues of alpha bloggers. But the story they stumble into becomes much more dangerous, unearthing a potential threat not only to Ryman and his family, but to the country itself.

REVIEW: It's not often one reads a story at just the right time. Grant's tale of a viral pandemic, of irrevocably altered social norms (and those who would leverage both the virus and the fear of it for personal or political ends) was published in 2010, but - in this age of coronavirus and social distancing and lockdown protests and skepticism of media - it feels eerily relevant in 2020. It's a strange near future that sees George Romero movies becoming unlikely survival guides (hence the popularity of "George"-based names among younger characters), as people struggled to come to grips with zombie movies coming to life around them, yet it's a future that always feels solid and grounded, with characters who are never flat or stupid. George and her brother are part of a whole generation that has known nothing but life with the zombie virus, a generation that feels some friction with the older people who still dominate much of the world and dictate policy... people who still tend to dismiss them as "kids" and fail to consider how big of a threat George and company can be to plots and conspiracies. As for the virus and its effects, Grant clearly did extensive research, lending an impressive air of verisimilitude to the pandemic; indeed, part of the reason current events seem so familiar is that she thought through what would happen in a society where a deadly disease was spreading like wildfire, and how people would respond. The story is a white-knuckle ride, and even when I thought I'd figured out what was going on, there were a few twists in store, and more than one gut-punch. I honestly didn't think I'd enjoy a horror book, especially a zombie-based horror book with politics and journalism at its core, this much, which is what kicked it up to a top rating. I'm looking forward to the rest of this trilogy, though I don't mind admitting that I need a book or two off first... in part because, as I mentioned at the start, it's so very, scarily relevant right now.

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