BLACKOUT (Orbit ) by Mira Grant

***BLACKOUT is the third book in a trilogy that builds heavily upon itself. Because of that, there is no way that I can talk about this work without spoiling several key events of the previous books. It isn’t designed in a way that you would enjoy it without reading both of those first anyways, so start there. We’ve got reviews of both FEED and DEADLINE to check out in the meantime.***

Here it is people, the one you’ve been waiting for. Our oldest got us all excited, the middle kid left us agitated and confused and this one is supposed to wrap it all up. This is the point where Newsflesh will either be remembered as a great trilogy in a sea of limp, processed zombie crap or it will just leave us all pissed off for getting us so worked up. Does it satisfy?

Yes. Go buy it if you don’t already have a half-devoured copy on your bookshelf.

You want details before you blindly follow my orders? Fine. The conspiracy that overran the Ryman presidential campaign, leveled Oakland and left the team at After the End Times with too many corpses in their wake has only gotten broader. The heads of AtET are all hunted fugitives hiding out with a mad scientist. Florida has been lost completely, due to a surprise insect vector of Kellis-Amberlee, just in time to distract from the raid on the CDC. People with reservoir conditions are being killed off because they carry a possible immunity to the disease. And they’ve brought Georgia back as a clone?

That last bit had me worried, since it smacked of a cheap way to bring back a beloved character, but her resurrection is integral to the larger issue of criminal misuse of science for the purpose of maintaining control. Sure, we do get a nice comfy feeling having good old George back but we also know enough not to trust it in the hands of an author who has made it perfectly clear that she won’t treat us with kid gloves. Her presence, and the reason for it, alters the path of events in integral and powerful ways that certainly calmed my initial qualms.

Overall, the dangers compound, hope rises and gets smashed against the ground, the stakes escalate and the conspiracy we’ve been following deepens. Yet, through it all, Mira maintains the sense of regular people unwittingly and unwillingly thrust into desperate times and situations determined to do what’s right, even when they don’t necessarily know what the right thing to do is, or how to do it. They’re not special, just schleps who want the truth to be heard.

And damn do I love those schleps. I can’t gush enough over how comforting it was to settle back into this crew of crazy people. Shaun’s headlong rush for vengeance and crazy discussions with the dead sister living in his head. Becks’ anger and pure sincerity. Mahir’s dry and incredibly British sense of humor. Maggie’s energy. Aleric being an asshole. They feel like friends I never got to meet in person and I still enjoyed getting a chance to sit in their heads while the world crumbled around them.

Now, those expecting a denouement to the grand, global issues revolving around the Masons and their fellow newsies may find themselves a bit disappointed. Changes and resolutions are moved toward, but we don’t get to see the long term effect of them, so we don’t know how it truly works out. However, in my mind at least, this was never a story about those issues so much as how these people dealt with them. In that, we do reach a very satisfying conclusion that wrapped up their stories quite well. However, I am biting my tongue about a certain revelation that I didn’t think was necessary, except to give a romantic edge to the story that wasn’t really needed and made it a bit creepy.

All in all, this is a great last third to the Newsflesh story that manages to keep the focus clearly on the characters while still revealing incredible and frightening things about both their world and ours.

 Visit Mira Grant's Website and buy the book.

Reviewed by Anton Cancre

Anton Cancre is one of those rotting, pus-filled thingies on the underside of humanity that your mother always warned you about. He has oozed symbolic word-farms onto the pages of Shroud, Sex and Murder and Horrorbound magazines as well as The Terror at Miskatonic Falls, an upcoming poetry anthology by Shroud Publishing and continues to vomit his oh-so-astute literary opinions, random thoughts and nonsense at antoncancre.blogspot.com. No, he won't babysit you pet shoggoth this weekend. Stop asking.

Deadline book 2 of the Newsflesh Trilogy

By Mira Grant
Published by Orbit


*Warning, this review contains spoilers for FEED, the preceding book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy read the review here, then read that book first.*

It sucks to be the second part of a trilogy. The first part is young and impetuous, the vibrant child introducing us to new worlds and people while establishing the broad conflict. The last one is older, more mature, bringing it all together and providing us with a sense of closure. All the middle kids does is get everyone into as much trouble as possible.

Boy, howdy does DEADLINE do that.

Picking up scant months after the events of FEED, we're plopped into the head of Shaun Mason as he barely holds the crew of After the End Times together. The ghost of his dead sister is in his head, an officially deceased CDC researcher is in his apartment and his city is overrun with the hungry amplified. This new addition to the group has information that someone is willing to firebomb the entirety of Oakland to keep secret. It would appear that the conspiracy behind his sister's death is alive and Shaun will stop at nothing to get at the heart of the matter.

Everything that made FEED my favorite novel of last year, as well as my second favorite zombie novel of all time, is still here: political intrigue, in-depth and honest characters that work their way into your heart and life, spot on social commentary on the way we live under the threat of a terror state and some damn fine “hold onto your britches while you fill them with poo” action. Of course, Mira continues to ratchet up the tension with the increasingly tightening noose around the necks of our intrepid newsies. Her previously proven Whedonesque willingness to kill off any character, no matter how important they may seem, certainly kept me on my toes in that regard.

I specifically enjoyed the change in POV from FEED's supremely self-assured and driven Georgia to the increasingly apathetic and uncertain Shaun. His feelings of inadequacy and mental breakdown (he doesn't just talk to his dead sis, she argues back) provide the heavy emotional impact this go round. The world around and within him is collapsing into chaos and you'll feel every moment.

Sure, it will leave you hanging in the air once the last page is turned, but that is what middle children do. Also, there's a revelation near the end that I want to call cheap but it does fit with the information we are provided earlier and I'm curious to see how it will play out in BLACKOUT. Overall, it's a hell of a worthy followup to FEED that had me tearing through the pages and left me salivating more. What else can you ask for?

Buy it here.

Reviewed by Anton Cancre

Anton Cancre is one of those rotting, pus-filled thingies on the underside of humanity that your mother always warned you about. He has oozed symbolic word-farms onto the pages of Shroud, Sex and Murder and Horrorbound magazines as well as The Terror at Miskatonic Falls, an upcoming poetry anthology by Shroud Publishing and continues to vomit his oh-so-astute literary opinions, random thoughts and nonsense at antoncancre.blogspot.com. No, he won't babysit you pet shoggoth this weekend. Stop asking.