Category: Horror

Blackout by Mira Grant

(Cover picture courtesy of A Dribble of Ink.)

The conspiracy that rules post-zombie America is alive and well.  The same can’t be said of the bloggers who dared to tell the truth as they found it.

Now, with too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, Shaun Mason and his team must face mad scientists, zombie bears, and rogue government agencies—and if there’s one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this:

Things can always get worse.

Being the snarky, rather opinionated person I am, I am rarely lost for words.  But after reading Blackout,the last book in the Newsflesh trilogy, there’s only one thing to say.

Wow.

After that enormous cliffhanger at the end of Deadline, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Blackout and when I did, I wasn’t disappointed.  Funny, dark, suspenseful and full of plot twists, Blackout was no disappointment.  And it even had a satisfying, if not entirely happy, ending.  What else could I really ask for?

In Deadline, Mira Grant explains the Kellis-Amberlee virus itself so we can understand things like reservoir conditions and spontaneous remissions.  But in this last book, we find out pretty much everything about the virus, including why mosquitoes have suddenly become a vector.  As you have probably guessed, this new vector is manmade and Dr. Abbey has her hands full figuring out the structure of this new threat before time runs out.

One of the recurring themes throughout the trilogy is the importance of the truth, but this features even more prominently in Blackout.  Shaun, Becks, Alaric, Mahir and a character I won’t mention because it’s a spoiler have some very tough choices about whether the truth is really the best thing.  I had serious doubts about their resolve, especially near the end, but the team stays true to themselves.  Sadly, one of my favourite characters dies, but at least they go out in a blaze of glory protecting those they love.

And now, to lighten things up, here’s one of my favourite parts of the whole novel (Warning: language not suitable for younger readers):

“I, Shaun Phillip Mason, being of sound mind and body, do hereby swear to poke dead things with sticks, do stupid shit for your amusement and put it all on the internet where you can watch it over and over again.”  (Pg 4)

That pretty much sums up Mira Grant’s sense of humour, doesn’t it?

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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Deadline by Mira Grant

(Cover picture courtesy of Orbit Books.)

Shaun Mason is a man without a mission.  Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to.  Playing with dead things just doesn’t seem as fun when you’ve lost as much as he has.

But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life.  Because she brings news—he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.

Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.

After Feed cured me of my irrational zombie fear, I decided to read the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy: Deadline.  I’m really glad I did because it builds on things hinted at in the first book very well.  If you don’t want to read any spoilers, I suggest you stop reading right now.

It’s been a year since Georgia died, but since Shaun talks to her in his head constantly, it feels like she’s a major character.  Shaun talks to her aloud and accepts that he is mentally ill because he doesn’t want to let go of his adoptive sister.  His point of view is very different from George’s because he’s more reckless and unsure of himself and what he’s doing.  I guess that’s a natural response to shooting your sister in the spinal column after she’s been injected with live Kellis-Amberlee.  Deadline follows Shaun’s quest for the truth and throughout the journey he has a lot of character development as each new, horrible revelation comes to light.

The focus of Deadline isn’t politics like it was in Feed.  Instead, it focuses a lot more on the Kellis-Amberlee virus itself.  The level of detail Mira Grant has put into her world-building is fantastic and, unlike a lot of zombie novels, she explains what causes people to turn into zombies.  Truly, this is science fiction at its finest because it has a fast-paced plot while paying attention to character development and world-building.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

[Book review by ForTheLoveOfBooks, my first guest poster! –CS]

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with  a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

   There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

  But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the Man Jack-who has already killed Bod’s family…

I personally don’t remember when I became familiar with Neil Gaiman, but I do remember one of my friends mentioning The Graveyard Book as one of the books she was planning on reading. I forgot about it for a while and then when I was on vacation in Sri Lanka last summer, I saw it in a bookstore, however the version that I saw was this one  which was published by Bloomsbury. I find the cover of the Bloomsbury version much more appealing; there’s a darkness to it which I find lacking in the American publication. I’ll move on from my usual cover gushing now!

The book  takes place somewhere in England and follows the adventures of Nobody Owens, a.k.a. Bod to the Graveyard Folk as he walks between the living and the dead. The story begins when Bod is a baby and his family are murdered by the mysterious man called Jack and continues till he is about 14/15 years old. Jacks always seem to get a bad name don’t they? You’ve got Jack in The Graveyard Book, Jack The Ripper, the list can go on and on. In his time growing up in the Graveyard, Bod encounters strange and fantastical people and creatures.  To name a few they are: the Indigo Man, the Sleer, the ghouls, Ms. Lupescu, Liza the witch and the human girl Scarlett.

Plot wise, I enjoyed the story. I liked the  darkness of the opening sequence in the book and the illustrations by Dave McKean add to the drama. Some chapters of the book were definitely fillers and sometimes it did feel like they were unnecessary, but regardless they did add a certain charm to the story. The ending of the story caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect a larger scheme of things to be occurring on the sidelines, but the story behind the scenes definitely helps to understand the connection between Jack and Bod. However it felt rushed to me; everything happened in a matter of hours. I also enjoyed the magical concepts Gaiman incorporated into the story such as ‘Fading’ and ‘Dreamwalking’ and I thought they were used well within the situations Bod found himself in.

Character wise, my only complaint is that there was a lack of character development. But then again this is a Children’s book and I suppose character development is not a requirement. I liked Bod’s character, he was sweet, genuine and likable. His parents; the Owens family were also likable characters, but I felt that they didn’t appear enough and I would have liked to see more of them. Bod’s guardian Silas was one of my favourite characters because he was so mysterious. At first I wasn’t too fond of Ms. Lupescu because she was giving Bod horrible food and didn’t seem to like him all that much, however when she appeared in Bod’s hour of need as  a  ‘Hound of God’ I thought she was awesome.

I personally didn’t like Scarlett’s teenage version. I liked her as a child, but she grew up to be an angsty teenager and I felt that there had been too much time lost between Bod and her that she didn’t quite understand him. I suppose who would teenagers be if they weren’t angsty and driven by hormones? The character Jack was well written; he was dark and scary and everything you want in a villain. The illustrations of Jack were also great because having him appear in front of you visually gave me goosebumps and I felt scared every time he appeared in the story.

Overall, The Graveyard Book was an enjoyable read. The concept of the book is unique and it’s different from my own reading experiences as a child. I personally don’t think I would have read this book as a child because it’s quite dark, but that’s my personal opinion. The book had some great quotes such as “Of all the organs, ‘the tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste our sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sour with the same tongue” and “A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is a great democracy.” However there was something about the book that fell short for me. I don’t know how to explain it, but maybe I had too many expectations for it.

My Rating: 4/5

Would I recommend it? Yes

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Feed by Mira Grant

(Cover picture courtesy of Tansyrr.)

The year was 2014.  We had cured cancer.  We had beaten the common cold.  But in doing so we had created something new, something terrible that no one could stop.  The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives—the dark conspiracy behind the infected.  The truth will out, even if it kills them.

“Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiot—in this case, my brother Shaun—deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens.”

When a book starts out like this, you know it’s going to be good.  As many of my readers know, I have a serious fear of zombies that was triggered when I watched Dawn of the Dead at the age of eight.  I bought this book to cure myself of this irrational fear and I truly think Mira Grant’s biting wit (pardon the pun) and excellent characters have cured me.  Zombies don’t scare me any longer, so now I can get on with my review.

Feed is told mostly from the point of view of Georgia Mason—George for short—and she is an excellent narrator.  She is a three dimensional character that is brave, resourceful and protective of her reckless brother Shaun.  And unlike many female characters, she doesn’t fall in love through the course of the story.  In fact, there is no romance whatsoever for the main characters, which is definitely a refreshing change.

I would call Feed more of a political thriller with zombies than a zombie book with politics.  The political atmosphere in a post-Rising world is very different from what it is now, but it makes a lot of sense in the context.  There is much less active participation because of the fear of the Kellis-Amberlee virus infecting you.  And of course the reclamation of zombie-infested lands like Alaska and parts of California is the hot-button issue of the day.  As George and Shaun uncover a conspiracy while on the campaign trail with Senator Ryman, the plot moves along even more quickly than before toward its tragic ending.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

(Cover picture courtesy of Carrie Ryan’s website.)

In Mary’s world, there are simple truths.

The Sisterhood always knows best.

The Guardians will protect and serve.

The Unconsecrated will never relent.

And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village.  The fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her.  She’s learning things that she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power.  And, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown in to chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.

Now she must choose between her village and her future, between the one she loves and the one who loves her.  And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Could there be life outside a world surrounded by so much death?

Zombies, romance and death…what more could you ask for in a post-apocalyptic book?  As it turns out, a lot more than what The Forest of Hands and Teeth has to offer.  In Carrie Ryan’s debut novel, Mary (the book’s main character) wants more than what life in her isolated village has to offer.  But when her mother is bitten and her village is overrun by zombies (which are called the Unconsecrated to avoid the z word),  her life is turned upside down and she must make a choice: to stay in her now zombie-infested village or go forward to an uncertain destination deep in the Forest.

I have not yet reviewed a book in which one line in it sums up the entire novel: “You’re selfish to want to sacrifice all of us for your own whims.”  (Cass, page 144)  If Mary is one thing, it is selfish.  I have rarely read a novel in which I cannot identify with the protagonist, but The Forest of Hands and Teeth is an exception.  Mary wants more in life, but she is willing to sacrifice people she loves to reach her dream of seeing the ocean.  To me, that seems pretty selfish and it feels like she is always the exceptional character in the novel.  She gets attacked by zombies without being bitten, runs through the Forest and scales down a sheer cliff without getting picked off by falling zombies and is the only one to know the truth about the Sisterhood and all its secrets.

Carrie Ryan’s world-building is also lacking.  Mary’s village is completely closed off to Outsiders, yet there seem to be no unfortunate genetic implications, even after several generations.  Also, the story of how the village came to be is a bit unbelievable to me because it was established during the apocalypse for future generations.  If there was a zombie apocalypse, your first concern would likely be your own survival, not the establishment of a village filled with enough supplies to last for generations.

Despite the character and world-building faults, The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a fast-paced, page-turning novel with a few interesting insights into what could happen when a village is completely cut off from the rest of the world.

I give this book 2/5 stars.

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