Newsflesh Trilogy Complete With Blackout, Fans Rise Up and Rejoice
Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy is complete now. It’s safe to pick up Feed, and then Deadline, because the third book, Blackout, is awesome.
I’m not suggesting that any of you should have waited for all three books to hit print. You should have picked up Feed when I recommended one year and one day ago. There’s an added layer of suspense, an extra thrill, when you finish a fantastic book, realize there’s more coming, and then find yourself wondering whether or not the author will stick the landing. Mira Grant sticks the landing.
In my original review of Feed I explained why it was the only sort of zombie fiction that works for me anymore. If you’re coming late to the party: I can’t believe in a modern zombie apocalypse in which people don’t have any awareness of what zombies are. Our entertainment is full of them. Mira Grant delivers a zombie apocalypse I can believe in because that awareness is there.
She also succeeds because her fiction is finely crafted. She’s a great writer, and her team of alpha readers and editors has worked hard from start to finish to make sure the Newsflesh trilogy rocks. One of my readers took my early advice and picked up Feed a year ago. At DeepSouthCon 50 he returned the favor by giving me a brand new copy of Blackout, which I hadn't had the chance to read yet.
My only warning to you: Newsflesh will probably ruin lesser zombie apocalypses forever. And I say this as a guy who may or may not be writing one. My hat, it is doffed to Mira Grant. I know to salute a superior zombie story-teller with the symbolic flashing of tasty brains.