Book Review of Feed by: Mira Grant

Title: Feed

Author: Mira Grant

Publisher: Orbit Books

Released: 2010

Okay, now to get down to business. As the first book to be reviewed on my blog I feel Feed was the right choice. Feed tells the story of a brother and sister blogging team consisting of Georgia and Shaun Mason. Their story takes place in a world where cancer and the common cold has been cured but comes with the nasty side effect of zombieism. A virus called Kellis-Amberlee has been unleashed on the public at large infecting everyone with an inactive state of zombie that will be unleashed with their eventual  death. The zombies will never be truly defeated and will always be a threat to the surviving population. Georgia and Shaun Mason are members of the after the Rising generation and have learned to live with all the precautions and blood tests that are put in place to separate the infected from the non-infected. In the world of Feed, the news media has become distrusted and bloggers have risen to the status of where the public gets their news. Shaun, Georgia, and Buffy make up a blog news site and they are chosen for the groundbreaking job of being the first bloggers to personally follow and report on a presidential campaign for Senator Ryman. On the campaign trail they run into danger and sabotage with someone using zombies as a weapon to derail the senator's chances of winning the nomination and election. Shaun, Georgia, and Buffy enter into a race to uncover the truth and stay alive.

I enjoyed reading Feed. When I first picked up the book, my initial excitement was over the implied subject matter of zombies but on further reading it became apparent that zombies weren't the main focus. As a first time blogger, it was interesting to encounter a book where blogging was the main mode of information. Where the news media had lost the trust of the public and bloggers had taken up the task of reporting the real news. The book was also current to today on illustrating the hard road political candidates take in their goal to eventually becoming president of the United States.

Some aspects I enjoyed about the book were the action scenes involving the actual takedown of zombies and the feeling of a world where everyone is in danger of infection. Mira Grant did a good job of illustrating a world where no one was really safe. I also found it humorous how a popular name for children after the Rising was George or Georgia because of George Romero who became an accidental hero because of his movies like Night of the Living Dead, that showed the world the right and most effective way to kill a zombie, thus saving humanity. There were also fun references to Steve Irwin and Steve-o. The book was action packed and rarely encountered any slow spots.

Some things that I didn't like so much about Feed was the sort of melodramatic flair Georgia and Shaun had for exposing the truth. They also had a strange brother/sister relationship, being almost too devoted to each other. While all the descriptions of this after the Rising world was kind of cool to learn, it was almost put in places where it didn't make the most sense or maybe it was just too much of it. All in all I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to other readers who enjoy a zombie novel.

Feed is the first book in the Newsflesh Trilogy with the second book Deadline available now.

BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL: 4 (out of 5)