Mira Grants Newsflesh trilogy starter Feed is more a critique of current news culture than a zombie slaying book. Sure the zombies are present, but unless they are trying to chew on the characters, they're mostly just scenery. The heart of the book is the bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason and their friend Buffy who just happen to be tagging along with Wisconsin Senator Peter Ryman as he campaigns for presidential election. George, as Shaun usually refers to his sister, is the main narrator of the book and she tends to tell things like they are. She's a Newsie, the type of person who sees the world and thinks, 'Here's the truth. Now I must tell you that truth.' Shaun's more the Irwin type, as in Steve Irwin type. He's a bit more adventurous and repeatedly likes to poke things (i.e. zombies) with sticks whether at a safe distance or not. Buffy's the poetry writing tech support for the Mason sibs.
I enjoyed reading Feed, mostly because the writing is almost simplistic at times even if the political agendas constantly hanging around the piece are a bit obvious at times and a little underhanded in others. Ryman's too good to be true, of course, and his running partner, Texas Governor David Tate is the Bible thumping hard-nosed military man out to get rid of all the zombies. In other words, contrasting characters. But the rest of the agenda of the book is that the government is hiding things. Big things. As Georgia writes in her blog, 'They are willfully channeling research away from a cure for this disease, and they are doing it under the auspices of our own government' (517). They being the CDC apparently and the disease being Kellis Amberlee which turns dead people into zombies. It's a threat. 'There's always something to be afraid of. It used to be terrorists. Now it's zombies' (346).
See, told you this is a current book. Terrorists become zombies. It's a pretty direct, if not shocking, analogy. But then, most good science fiction uses direct analogies like that to some political end. I'm not saying this is a great book. Grant often repeats bits of information to excess through Georgia, but the book is far from bad or juvenile as some have suggested. The complexity of the issues is tied directly to the pop culture references dating to either now or ten years ago so that the writing never gets overly saturated in its own self-importance. There's zombies and politics and a few brain splatterings and moanings to deal with in the book. It's a bit of everything, really, in its way. The book is also highly entertaining if you go for that sort of thing. Recommended Reading.
Work Cited.
Grant, Mira. Feed. New York: Orbit, 2010.
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