Mira Grant’s Newsflesh Trilogy

Last night I finished Blackout (Orbit, 2012), the third book in the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant (a pen name of Seanan McGuire), so I can now say a few things about the trilogy in general.

The first book, Feed (Orbit, 2010) I read for the “Good Read” panel at Farthing Party; the second, Deadline (Orbit, 2011), was on this year’s Hugo ballot, and I read it as a Hugo voter. There wasn’t anything pushing me to read the third book other than what I read in the first two, which is to say that I didn’t have to finish the trilogy.

Except that, actually, I did kind of have to: McGuire (as Grant) spins a hell of a tale that is both gripping and breathless. Here’s the sitch: we’re a couple of decades after a zombie uprising that was triggered by an interaction between a cure for the common cold and a cure for cancer. Nobody gets colds or cancer any more; they just turn into zombies when they die. Decades after the fact, the U.S. has barricaded itself behind quarantines and testing procedures.

In this context we have Georgia and Shaun Mason, adopted siblings and bloggers, selected in Feed to cover the 2040 presidential campaign. (Blogging is a big deal by this point: Georgia’s a newsblogger, Shaun is an “Irwin” — a zombie-taunter.) Events ensue, as they usually do, and the Masons and their team discover that (naturally) there’s more going on under the surface. The first book ends in tragedy (I’m not tellin’); the following two books twist and turn their way through to revelations, reversals, the usual thing. These are thrillers, and they move.

The devil is in the details, which McGuire just nails: the testing and decontamination protocols, and how people’s lives are distorted and diminished by them. The books say quite a bit about fear and security theatre that is certainly applicable to contemporary events, but McGuire isn’t beating you about the head with an agenda here. The books’ focus is first and foremost on the characters, their cares and their wants, and McGuire imbues them with life and affection, and she makes you care about them.

Where the books are less convincing for me is in their villains, who I felt were a little too malevolent to be completely convincing, and in their portrayal of U.S. electoral politics. Granted, a zombie uprising has a way of changing the rules somewhat, but national election campaigns are huge operations, and my suspension of disbelief was strained by the small scale of the presidential campaign in Feed and the easy access to the candidate the bloggers had. But that’s me having too much politics in my background.

That said, the books are tremendous fun and impossible to put down. If you’re not put off by things zombie, that is. You’re not, are you?

Buy Feed at Amazon (Kindle, UK) • publisher’s page
Buy Deadline at Amazon (Kindle, UK) • publisher’s page
But Blackout at Amazon (Kindle, UK) • publisher’s page