lightreads

Feed by Mira Grant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The one about the bloggers embedded in a presidential campaign in post-zombie apocalypse America of 2040. It’s going to take me a bit to get to the punchline here, so bear with me.



This book had the misfortune of spending its research budget on things I don’t know much about – virology and disease containment science – and none on things I know a shit ton about – presidential campaigns, politics in general, and political blogging in particular. And by “research budget” I mean ‘bandwidth Mira Grant dedicated to good world building.’ The zombie virus stuff looked shiny keen, but I was too distracted by going, ‘presidential campaigns don’t work like that. No, really, not even when there are zombies.’ I will show enormous and uncharacteristic restraint and not explain everything that was slapdash or illogical or nonsensical or just flat out incorrect about the politics in this book, because we’d be here all day. And also, I have been informed that not everybody cares about this stuff. I don’t always believe it, because I’m with the narrator of this book, who said, “There are moments when I look at the world I’m living in, all the cut-throat politics and the incredibly petty partisan deal-mongering, and I wonder how anyone could be happy doing anything else.” Yeah. It’s like that for me.



But restraint! I sometimes have it. So anyway, politics was a bust, and the blogging was a little shaky. Just the most obvious thing – you can’t have your characters explain how they’re the first bloggers to be embedded in a presidential campaign in 2040 when it has already happened when your book goes to press in 2010. And more fundamentally, there is something disingenuous about both author and characters using a lot of this ‘blogs are where the truth is, the little guy on the internet has integrity that the print media doesn’t’ shpeel when the bloggers in the book (government-licensed, by the way) are all but indistinguishable from traditional media outlets, like some of the wire services. With the exception that it’s actually much more obvious where the money for the traditional media is coming from. And don’t get me started on this print media versus blogging culture clash she has going on – I haven’t heard people trotting out a lot of this stuff since the Howard Dean campaign. That was back in 2004, for anyone not keeping track.



Aaanyway. I say all this first because it’s stuff that did bug me about the book. But secondly to make the point that when I say this book got me, I mean it had to work at it. And it got me but good. It is frustrating and tense and scary, and sweet, and wrenchingly sad. It’s one of those stories about the little guy on the internet fighting back that work on me even though they always trip my cynicism circuit. I was totally wrung out when I was done reading it, with that physical ache you get when it feels like you’ve cried hard, even though you haven’t.



So yeah, definitely a recommendation. I’m just frustrated because the book was pretty good, but there were a solid dozen ways it wasn’t brilliant, and it really, really could have been.



(Disability tag for protagonist's retinal condition and chronic pain, handled in subtle and interesting and totally believable ways).



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