Book! Deadline by Mira Grant
Sunday, September 15, 2013
I finished Deadline, the sequel to Feed, which I had a little rave about here.
This review will be spoiler free. I want you to go and buy this book, because I think you will enjoy it and you will definitely enjoy it best if you don't know what's coming. Find out at the same time the characters so, which is much the best way of doing anything.
That said: it's nice to be back in the post-Rising world. It seems even more familiar than it did last time, but since a large part of how the book handles a world with Zombies in it is...
...oh, look, I can't do this. If you know anything about really good Zombie stories you'll know that the best of the bunch aren't really about Zombies. Romero films, for example, use Zombies to talk about other things. If you came for the gore and the zombie deaths and the horror, you will be entertained, but if you came looking for story and levels, you'll be rewarded. It's the same with this series.
Deadline picks up a little after the events of Feed. Where Feed was "Fear and loathing and Zombies on the Campaign Trail" this is something a little different. The pace has picked up, the characterisation remains sharp and entirely effective, the plot takes some unexpected turns and I was left needing to read the last in the trilogy.
I'm a book junkie, but a discriminating one. This book made me happy, in the same way that I was happy about The Empire Strikes Back, or The Two Towers: I know I'm in the middle of a story that I'm going to be coming back to more than once, I'm reading about characters that I will continue to care about after the story is done and I know that - because this is a story with zombies in it - maybe not everyone I like will make it out alive, but that will be OK because they will at least have lived.
Mira Grant's style really works for me. Her prose is direct, immediate and immersive. As I said earlier, the post-Rising world isn't a nice place to be but it's now thoroughly familiar and therefore a bit comfortable. I suspect I could live there because she makes the blood tests and decontamination rituals commonplace and expected. You soon fall into the same rhythm as the characters, which is how the book grabs you and starts gnawing on you.
Speaking of which, for a book ostensibly about zombies there aren't all that many.
But that's good. And now I have to rant a bit about Doctor Who.
One of my favourite genres of Who story is the evergreen "base under seige", which are always at their best while the Doctor and the assorted humans are figuring out what the threat is and how to keep it out. That's the exciting bit for me, the prep and the work. You know that the threat is going to get in somehow, and you know that when it does the interesting people you're currently watching will probably end up being eaten or shot or driven mad or otherwise seriously messed with. That's not interesting. Or it's briefly interesting, because as soon as the threat gets in you lose all tension and characterisation, and often you lose dialogue and character as well.
In Deadline, pretty much the whole book is the Good Bit. You know the zombies are out there, and that anyone could become one at any time, so the time you spend with the characters is more important. There are assorted nods to the fleetingness of life and the ever present danger of Amplification (the term for when the virus gets to take over and turn you into a shambling eater) but they are the backdrop to a much more human story.
That's where this book wins over the assorted "I survived a zombie apocalypse" novels I've read. The characterisation just keeps going. I come to care about the characters even though they aren't created to be particularly sympathetic. Grant keeps them human, which means they're fallible and breakable. They fail, they break, they say things they might regret and do things they shouldn't, and this is entirely appropriate because they are, collectively, having a very bad and stressful time. They come across as real people in a nearly impossible situation, and that's a triumph.
I like heroes, but I have never liked the perfect heroes or the infallible ones. I like there to be some doubt that everything is going to be OK. I get all of that here. I also get a nice pile of revelations and new information about the world and how it works.
I'm a sucker for a conspiracy theory, me. I love Charles Stross's Laundry series, and some spy books, for the same reason: hidden knowledge made accessible. You can't beat the thrill of knowing things you aren't supposed to.
So go and read Deadline. I've got to get hold of Blackout.
This review will be spoiler free. I want you to go and buy this book, because I think you will enjoy it and you will definitely enjoy it best if you don't know what's coming. Find out at the same time the characters so, which is much the best way of doing anything.
That said: it's nice to be back in the post-Rising world. It seems even more familiar than it did last time, but since a large part of how the book handles a world with Zombies in it is...
...oh, look, I can't do this. If you know anything about really good Zombie stories you'll know that the best of the bunch aren't really about Zombies. Romero films, for example, use Zombies to talk about other things. If you came for the gore and the zombie deaths and the horror, you will be entertained, but if you came looking for story and levels, you'll be rewarded. It's the same with this series.
Deadline picks up a little after the events of Feed. Where Feed was "Fear and loathing and Zombies on the Campaign Trail" this is something a little different. The pace has picked up, the characterisation remains sharp and entirely effective, the plot takes some unexpected turns and I was left needing to read the last in the trilogy.
I'm a book junkie, but a discriminating one. This book made me happy, in the same way that I was happy about The Empire Strikes Back, or The Two Towers: I know I'm in the middle of a story that I'm going to be coming back to more than once, I'm reading about characters that I will continue to care about after the story is done and I know that - because this is a story with zombies in it - maybe not everyone I like will make it out alive, but that will be OK because they will at least have lived.
Mira Grant's style really works for me. Her prose is direct, immediate and immersive. As I said earlier, the post-Rising world isn't a nice place to be but it's now thoroughly familiar and therefore a bit comfortable. I suspect I could live there because she makes the blood tests and decontamination rituals commonplace and expected. You soon fall into the same rhythm as the characters, which is how the book grabs you and starts gnawing on you.
Speaking of which, for a book ostensibly about zombies there aren't all that many.
But that's good. And now I have to rant a bit about Doctor Who.
One of my favourite genres of Who story is the evergreen "base under seige", which are always at their best while the Doctor and the assorted humans are figuring out what the threat is and how to keep it out. That's the exciting bit for me, the prep and the work. You know that the threat is going to get in somehow, and you know that when it does the interesting people you're currently watching will probably end up being eaten or shot or driven mad or otherwise seriously messed with. That's not interesting. Or it's briefly interesting, because as soon as the threat gets in you lose all tension and characterisation, and often you lose dialogue and character as well.
In Deadline, pretty much the whole book is the Good Bit. You know the zombies are out there, and that anyone could become one at any time, so the time you spend with the characters is more important. There are assorted nods to the fleetingness of life and the ever present danger of Amplification (the term for when the virus gets to take over and turn you into a shambling eater) but they are the backdrop to a much more human story.
That's where this book wins over the assorted "I survived a zombie apocalypse" novels I've read. The characterisation just keeps going. I come to care about the characters even though they aren't created to be particularly sympathetic. Grant keeps them human, which means they're fallible and breakable. They fail, they break, they say things they might regret and do things they shouldn't, and this is entirely appropriate because they are, collectively, having a very bad and stressful time. They come across as real people in a nearly impossible situation, and that's a triumph.
I like heroes, but I have never liked the perfect heroes or the infallible ones. I like there to be some doubt that everything is going to be OK. I get all of that here. I also get a nice pile of revelations and new information about the world and how it works.
I'm a sucker for a conspiracy theory, me. I love Charles Stross's Laundry series, and some spy books, for the same reason: hidden knowledge made accessible. You can't beat the thrill of knowing things you aren't supposed to.
So go and read Deadline. I've got to get hold of Blackout.
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