Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy: the short short pimping post.

[dira]

Firstly, for people who have already read Feed: Shaun & George fanart by quidly. MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FEED! But if you have read it, go look, it is lovely.


For people who maybe have never heard of the Newsflesh Trilogy (Feed, Deadline, and forthcoming in May 2012, Blackout) by Mira Grant (aka seanan_mcguire) or have heard of it and think that they are not really interested in more zombie horror whatever, here. I had it in my head a while ago that I wanted to write a pimping post, with lovingly selected bits of text, but when I went to look I found that the entire appeal of the books (especially for fangirls) can be found in a single excerpt, so this pimping post will actually be pretty short.

The protagonists of Feed and Deadline are Georgia Mason and her twin-ish brother, Shaun. (Ish, because they are actually about six weeks apart in age and not biologically related; their parents are essentially reality TV stars of the zombie apocalypse, and they adopted Shaun and Georgia as infants to serve as a neverending well of ratings boosts.) George and Shaun are twenty-something reporters just about to get the story that will make their joint career--George does straight news, Shaun is an "Irwin" who specializes in risking life and limb by going out and poking wildlife with sticks to get exciting footage. And, yes, in their world the wildlife in question is zombies. But this is not a story about zombies. It's a story of a world so filled with endless threats--from fame-whoring parents to the endless danger that the person standing next to you could turn into a zombie at virtually any moment--that it only contains one other person you can really trust.

So here, a bit of private musing from George that tells you all you really need to know about whether you want to read these books:

Sometimes we leave the connecting door between our rooms open all night. We'd still share a room if they'd let us, turn the other room into an office and have done with it. Because both of us hate to be alone, and both of us hate to have other people--people outside the country we've made together--around when we're defenseless. We're always defenseless when we're asleep.

We leave the connecting door open, and I wake up in the night to the sound of him snoring, and I wonder how the hell I'm going to stay alive after he finally slips up. He'll die first, we both know it, but I don't know . . . I really don't know how long I'll stay alive without him. That's the part Shaun doesn't know. I don't intend to be an only child for long.

Comments

[missmollyetc]

If not for zombies, I would be completely on board with this series.

[dira]

Clearly I need to go through and redact all the zombies so you can read about the codependent awesomeness that is Shaun and George! :D

[missmollyetc]

Do it! It'd be like reading Sekrit Government Documents!

[amberfox]

There are zombies, but the zombie-ing is mostly offscreen, if that helps. Though there are some things that can only happen they way they do in a zombocalype, mostly things like "Bitten? Shoot yourself now and save your friends having to do it." I mostly rec it to people as a disutopian, post-apocalyptic political investigative-reporter story.

[missmollyetc]

::grins:: Thank you for the rec! I'm pretty zombie-phobic, however, so I'm not certain this would be my cup of tea.

[grammarwoman]

I put Feed on my library request list, and by the time it came up, I had completely forgotten what it was about. It shocked the hell out of me when I realized it was about zombies, but I couldn't put it down.

It was amazing! I need to track down the next one.

[dira]

Deadline is so, so, so excellent! And weirdly seems like it has more action AND fewer zombies at the same time.

[amberfox]

On the strength of Feed, of which I own 3 paper (keep, loan, backup) and 3 formats of ebook (iBook, Kindle, and Nook), I bought 2 copies of Deadline the day it came out and took the day off to read it. My GetGlue response sums it up, I think:


"Bought. Devoured. Yelled at. Cursed author on Twitter. Read official thread on LJ. Ranted at sister. Went back and re-read some bits. Going back to re-read FEED to look for foreshadowing.

Yeah, I liked it."