Feed by Mira Grant

Publisher: Orbit
Publish Date:  May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0316081054 
Pages: 608
Cover Design: Lauren Panepinto
Cover Images: Shutterstock


First of all, let me say that I am thrilled that this is part of a trilogy.  It's called Newsflesh.  The second book DEADLINE comes out this month in the US and UK.  Ms. Grant also writes as Seanan McGuire in case you want to check her out on those titles.

FEED grabbed me on the first page and held me tight until the very end.  The story is set twenty years after the Rising and the blurb goes like this:  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.

I know!  I keep telling y'all I don't like zombies, but I keep reading the blasted books!  What is wrong with me?!  Trust me, the best zombie books are like this one.  The zombies are part of the story, but almost a backdrop upon which the story happens.  The real story is about politics and how far people will go to get what they want and bloggers or as I think of them, truthspreaders and how far they will go to spread the truth.  Fun note here:  the population that survived?  A lot of it was due to watching George Romero's zombie movies and how his characters survived.  A whole lot of kids get named after him for being such a hero.

George (Georgia) and her brother, Shaun are bloggers.  After the Rising, print pretty much became obsolete.  Bloggers are where the news is these days.  They run a large blog where George is in charge of the Newsies (the hard news), Shaun is in charge of the Erwins (they poke dead things to see what happens, wonder where they got the name?lol) and Buffy (Georgette) is in charge of Fictionals (stories and poetry) AND the tech geek that keeps them all running. 

There's a presidential race coming up and one of the candidates has offered up a spot for a blogging team to travel with him and his people.  It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance and George/Shaun/Buffy jump at it.  Throughout their travels they find out just how far people are willing to go to have things their way - whether because of personal beliefs, religious beliefs or misinformation.  There's the story ofcourse, but interspersed are blogs, mostly from George and Shaun. 

Ms. Grant did an amazing job with having such different voices for the characters and their blogs.  George's is Images May Disturb You and is usually about doing the right thing and telling the truth, no matter how hard it is.  Shaun's is Hail to the King and tongue-in-cheek and with a hint of humor.  Buffy's is By the Sounding Sea and is usually very short stories, nothing newsie at all.  There's another set of blog inserts, by a later character, Rick; his is Another Point of True and is more of a combination of the three others:  there's news, with feeling and common sense.  There's a lot of small jokes in this book and in the midst of something terrible, you'll find one and smile.  Hail to the King made me smile every time I read it.

By the time I finished this book, I wanted to go out and DO SOMETHING.  It touched me in a way few books have.  I think it should be recommended reading in high school - it's an amazing story...oh yeah, there's a few zombies in it too.