Deadline (Newsflesh #2) by Mira Grant

Shaun is not doing well after George’s death. At least she’s still with him – or his grief shattered brain keeps conjuring her up for him – but the fact the boss is hearing voices (and talking back to them) doesn’t reassure anyone else around him.

But the drive to avenge George continues – along with the George driven need to discover the truth. What is really behind the conspiracy that lead to George’s death? A fleeing doctor from the CDC may provide the answers – starting with the CDC’s disturbing habit of killing off researchers who get too close to certain topics and asking the question WHY the CDC’s vast budget actually devotes so few resources to actually curing the zombie plague?

Questions lead to rogue researchers, some stunning data and some truly devastating revelations – both personally, but also for the entire planet.

This book had a very different tone from the previous book and, on the whole, I think that worked appropriately. In the last book things were very different for George and the people around her. She was embarking on the opportunity of a lifetime. They were doing something they passionately believed in, they were increasing their site to unprecedented levels, they were legitimatising their industry. Even through the eyes of these cynical people, there’s a positivity there, a sense of them doing something powerful and meaningful and things getting better – at least until everything starts collapsing. But even then, as the conspiracy is revealed in Feed there is a sense that they’re uncovering it, they’re succeeding.

Now contrast that with Deadline. They’ve uncovered the conspiracy – but it’s still been largely hushed and a very public scapegoat has been thrown to the wolves. They’re freewheeling, they’ve lost people they care desperately about, their leader is having a full blown psychotic break. Yes they’re pre-eminent bloggers now, but the cost has been huge and, for much of the book, they don’t even know what to do and are rather desperate and flailing. Even with the zombie apocalypse, Feed had a sense of, well, not positivity – but competence and confidence. George and co knew what they were doing, where, when and why. Shaun and his fellows do not. They’re lost, desperate and facing off against an enemy that is more dangerous than just about any other force in the country. People have died, people are continuing to die and no-one is grieving in a healthy fashion.

And then there’s Shaun as the narrator. George was a Newsie. She was a Newsie who endeavoured to present the truth with minimal spin and garnish. Her tone is informative and attempts to be objective. Shaun is not. He’s an Irwin. He finds dangerous situations and pokes it. He’s also emotional, depressed, in incredible pain, angry and dealing with mental illness. His tone is angry. His tone is subjective. His tone has an agenda and a mission and isn’t there to info dump for us. When he does info-dump, it’s more about his personal state and emotions than bringing us up to speed on the world.

Feed (Newsflesh #1) by Mira Grant

In 2014, the Rising happened. The dead came back to life and went on the rampage, biting or simply splattering the living to try to spread the infection. Millions died and the only reason more didn’t die was the Bloggers – while the news was telling the world that everything was ok, the Bloggers told the truth.

Decades have passed since that first Rising, decades in which society tried to put itself back together under knew, extreme security precautions, avoiding the zombie infested zones and living with the fact that anyone who dies will rise again – and attack and spread. In this paranoid world, the functions of government continue and it’s election time. And George (Georgia), her brother Shaun and he friend Buffy have been handed the biggest opportunity of their blogging careers – the chance to cover a presidential candidate for the full length of the campaign.

It’s a great victory for the legitimacy of blogging and a massive opportunity for George and Shaun to establish themselves as Alpha bloggers; but on the campaign trail they find something far more sinister than your average election time politics.

I love this world. I love this world because so much detail has gone into its creation. Not just into connecting all the fantasy elements together to make sure all of the fantastic and sci-fi and dystopian elements were internally consistent, but also the work that has gone into to plug all the gaps and make sure that it is something  can see and believe happening.

Because it’s a complicated world. It isn’t the standard zombie apocalypse with a few brave souls desperately trying to survive and occasionally losing it and trying to kill each other as has become something of a staple in the genre. This is a society that has survived and built up after the apocalypse. A society with people who have grown up not remembering anything but the zombie threat. A society that has to deal with the fact any human being could die and will rise as a zombie, who has to deal with the fact even a spec of infected bodily fluids could trigger your own zombiedom leading to a chain reaction that could massacre everyone around you and create an army of the undead – and not just zombies but any large mammal. A world where large sections of the country are abandoned or near abandoned because of the zombies, where there are threat zones designated based on how safe they are from zombies

The knock on effect from that is huge – beef disappears, large farm animals are too dangerous to keep around people since, if they die they become a threat. Wilderness becomes a no go area. And the endless quest for safety has led to ever more restrictions, gated communities where children can’t even go out and play and where an entire generation has grown up with a deep terror of crowds or the outside, their homes overlaid by security systems and constantly monitored for infection. The government has huge sweeping powers in the name of security – including a CDC with broad, lethal authorisation. People take constant blood tests to a paranoid degree to prove they are safe to be around.

All of this is put together with more unique elements – like the rise of blogging as a major source of media as the mainstream media tried to cover up the zombie outbreak rather than tell the truth – and entertainment for the shut in masses. It all comes together to be a deeply nuanced and multi-levelled world where hours must have gone into considering every contingency. Especially since this is also a book about politics so the political implications of everything have to be considered – laws about keeping large pets or annihilating all wildlife, the question of the death penalty, raising religiosity in the face of the near apocalypse; political issues that have been vastly skewed because of the zombie uprising.