DNF Review: Feed

Feed (Newsflesh #1)

By: Mira Grant

Published: April 10, 2010 by Orbit

609 pages

Source: Personal Kindle library

(Goodreads /Amazon)

Summary:

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.


FEED is the electrifying and critically acclaimed novel of a world a half-step from our own---a novel of geeks, zombies, politics and social media.

MY REVIEW:
I debated doing an actual review for this one but I decided to go ahead because the book isn't awful. Many I'm sure will enjoy it. But once I got to 20% (page 127) I knew this wasn't one I wanted to read. When you have 500+ books on your TBR list and probably 50+ in your possession to be read, you just don't have the time or energy to sit through something you don't enjoy. Especially something thats 600 pages! Unfortunately this book falls into that category for me: something I didn't enjoy.

I was intrigued because it was a zombie read and I'm a zombie fan. The problem is that "feed" doesn't necessarily mean "zombies feeding on the living". Sure, it does refer to that through the book, but the use of the word "feed" in this book is a news feed. Blah.

This story follows three people, Georgia, her adopted brother Shaun, and their friend Mason. Together they run a blog that all three write for. The trio are chosen to follow the campaign trail of a presidential candidate (really, the world still has an active government during a zombie apocalypse?!) and report their findings uncensored with the world. This will boost their ratings such as they've never seen it before, and in the process of gaining recognition for their work, will go miles towards their careers in their type of journalism blogging.

What I didn't like:
1. The heavy emphasis on politics and government and presidential campaigns. BORING. I read to escape the things in the world - not read more about them. These kind of topics fall into what I don't like to read about.

2. The zombies are like the background noise of the story. Aside from Georgia and her brother narrowly escaping a group of zombies in the beginning of the story, after 20% of the book that's about as much contact as we see the living have with the zombies. When I read a zombie story I want the characters running for their lives more frequently.

3. The ridiculous idea that even 20 years after the infections started that people were still going on with random unimportant things in their daily activities such as blogging (how on earth do they have access to technology and internet and TV anyway?!) and eating out at restaurants and pretending life is like the "old normal". When in reality, safety precautions are more important than ever.

4. At the end of each chapter, and sometimes at the beginning, there were excerpts from the blogs of the trio. I didn't understand the value in having these in the story. Dates were used with each one but it never went in any order other than perhaps the same year. It was too hard to try to track a time line in the story since these dates bounced back and forth in time among the three bloggers.

I wanted to like this. 3.89 average rating on Goodreads seemed high enough for me to give it a go. It just wasn't what I was expecting. You very well may enjoy that the zombies really don't take center stage....at least in the first 20% (127 pages) of the book. But if you are like me, and you like your zombies chasing people for their next meal, and in the midst of the chase you find humanity trying to take a stand while they strive to live and not just survive, then I wouldn't recommend this one.

Quotes that sum up this story:
We're the all-purpose opiate of the new millennium: We report the news, we make the news, and we give you a way to escape when the news becomes too much to handle.

I never wanted to be Lois Lane, girl reporter, even though I dressed like her for Halloween one year. I wanted to be Edward R. Murrow, facing down corruption in the government. I wanted to be Hunter S. Thompson, ripping the skin off the world. I wanted the truth, and I wanted the news...

The zombies are here, and they're not going away, but they're not the story. They were, for one hot, terrible summer at the beginning of the century, but now they're just another piece of the way things work. They did their part: They changed everything. Absolutely everything.

Final Rating - DNF (1 star)