Feed by Mira Grant

Title: Feed (Newsflesh Trilogy #1)
Author: Mira Grant
Publisher: Orbit
Original Publication Date: April 10, 2010
Pages: 571


When I was looking for the a book to get back at my roots, that is fantasy and science fiction, and under science fiction the proliferating post-apocalypse, dystopia and zombie genres, I happened to stumble on the Newsflesh trilogy. I however was not transported back to my beloved roots in my reading experience of Feed.  To put it bluntly, this is a conspiracy story with zombies as plot devices rather than being the plot. And still, I was able to appreciate iyt, reading it was a breath of fresh air a person needs a looks for once in a while.

The incremental world building process and origin story was well thought out. It is convincing enough by reason of its possibility and complexity. The effort at research and study for the backbone of the story is apparent and conspicuous and it is enjoyable to know the lengths the author has gone to bring this story to life.

I've said it before regarding book in this genre, the zombie genre has suffered the inevitable saturation that proliferating genres are so susceptible of. In this case, zombie literature has been chucked out the linear narratives, stream of consciousness school and the theme of plain old survival perspectives inter alia as the standard works. This is no surprise as these mediums are traditional, accessible and appealing to the market the genre is supposedly targeting. Included in these modes is what one could call dumbing down. What is perhaps more disturbing and perhaps worrying is that this dumbing down thematics are carried out in the YA fashion. Mira Grant is guilty to some extent of this. On some instances, she rubs down and shove in certain aspects of the story, like for example the repetitive checkpoints. But then again, credit is given to Mira Grant because shed did not saturate this book with the YA dumbing down, especially with the relationship/romance story in the book that is so out of context and blatantly disjointed in some zombie books where the insertion is conspicuously forced for marketability if not acquiescence to the bandwagons.

The book had minimal zombie encounters, but it was exciting all throughout. It was good how Mira paced the story itself. I'm looking forward to reading the second part in this series.