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redheadedfemme This book made me cry.
Very few books do that nowadays. I've been around the block a few times, and I' ve written a few stories of my own. It takes an astounding amount of skill to make the reader care so much about a fictional character that s/he breaks down at the character's death. It takes even more skill to write a death scene in the first person, and from the first-person viewpoint of the protagonist, no less. On the surface, this sounds like a cheap cop-out, a macabre twisting of the reader's emotions.
Trust me, it wasn't. This is a very long book, but if you stick with it, when you reach the point where Georgia dies, you too will be blubbering into your pillow. Not that it wasn't set up from the very first page; this is quite a lethal world Grant has created, and it's a wonder any of the main characters survive. Needless to say, they're all quite aware of it; I don't think any of them expects to reach forty, much less the old age enjoyed before the Rising. But the fact that all along, the heroine insisted her brother would die first, and the characterizations were set up to make the reader take that for granted--and then, when Georgia dies, it is that much more of a lethal blow, driving straight into your gut.
I couldn't have written it. I don't have such brass balls.
The world itself is quite amazing, a meticulously researched and plausible explanation of a zombie apocalypse. I know the words "plausible' and "zombie" seldom appear in the same sentence, but Mira Grant pulls it off. It makes me wonder if she caught wind of current research being done on a virus that can cure cancer--that sounds like just the kind of thing to make us writer-types clap our hands together with glee, just waiting to unleash our squiggly little brains on the idea and twist it beyond all recognition. She certainly succeeded. She also draws a terrifying picture of a society dragged down by this horror they must live with and cannot run away from, and the tiny flashes of humanity and hope that shine through nevertheless. Like Georgia's search for the truth, and her obsession with it that lives on past her death.
Buy this book. Read it. I used to think "World War Z" was the definitive zombie story, but "Feed" blows Max Brooks out of the water.
Very few books do that nowadays. I've been around the block a few times, and I' ve written a few stories of my own. It takes an astounding amount of skill to make the reader care so much about a fictional character that s/he breaks down at the character's death. It takes even more skill to write a death scene in the first person, and from the first-person viewpoint of the protagonist, no less. On the surface, this sounds like a cheap cop-out, a macabre twisting of the reader's emotions.
Trust me, it wasn't. This is a very long book, but if you stick with it, when you reach the point where Georgia dies, you too will be blubbering into your pillow. Not that it wasn't set up from the very first page; this is quite a lethal world Grant has created, and it's a wonder any of the main characters survive. Needless to say, they're all quite aware of it; I don't think any of them expects to reach forty, much less the old age enjoyed before the Rising. But the fact that all along, the heroine insisted her brother would die first, and the characterizations were set up to make the reader take that for granted--and then, when Georgia dies, it is that much more of a lethal blow, driving straight into your gut.
I couldn't have written it. I don't have such brass balls.
The world itself is quite amazing, a meticulously researched and plausible explanation of a zombie apocalypse. I know the words "plausible' and "zombie" seldom appear in the same sentence, but Mira Grant pulls it off. It makes me wonder if she caught wind of current research being done on a virus that can cure cancer--that sounds like just the kind of thing to make us writer-types clap our hands together with glee, just waiting to unleash our squiggly little brains on the idea and twist it beyond all recognition. She certainly succeeded. She also draws a terrifying picture of a society dragged down by this horror they must live with and cannot run away from, and the tiny flashes of humanity and hope that shine through nevertheless. Like Georgia's search for the truth, and her obsession with it that lives on past her death.
Buy this book. Read it. I used to think "World War Z" was the definitive zombie story, but "Feed" blows Max Brooks out of the water.
