I’ve had these on my “Read these next, you already own them, dummy!” shelf for quite a while. They came highly recommended by some people whose opinions I really trust, and it was nearing Hallowe’en plus election time, so it seemed like the time was right to read a series about zombies, politics and blogging, right?
Yeah, whatever.
They weren’t terrible, don’t get me wrong. But they kind of skirted the line.
Mira Grant is Seanan McGuire, and I’ve already talked about my issues with her stories. The VERY BEST THING about reading her work is her insanely detailed worldbuilding. When McGuire builds a world, that sucker stays built. For realsies. Even the things that didn’t make a whole lot of sense if we’re looking at them from a current perspective at least had a sense of “Well, yeah, I suppose that if this and this and this happened that would be possible.” So there’s that.
I think my primary issue with these books stems from the fact that they’re pretty much zombie books for people who don’t like zombies.
In that, yes, there was a zombie apocalypse, and everyone is constantly on edge because of the thought of the flesh eating former humans/mammals over 40 pounds, but we rarely actually SEE (er, read) any effing zombies.
There was one moment when I was ZOMG SO EXCITED because they were going to fight a ZOMBIE BEAR, but then the story switched to another character’s PoV and we only ever heard about the zombie bear in passing.
I shouldn’t have to feel like I need to apologize for wanting zombie stories to HAVE SOME DAMN ZOMBIES.
Second major issue. Repetitiveness. Throughout the series, someone drinks/wishes for a Coke ONE HUNDRED THREE TIMES. Most of the times, said Cokes were so cold they had condensation beading on the sides. I’m not kidding and I totally counted. In addition to the Coke fetish, everyone is constantly slapping or slamming their hands down on blood testing units (106 instances of both words) and needles “bite” flesh (27 instances). None of the others are as prevalent as the Cokes (jesus, really 103 times?!), but it was exceptionally annoying, especially reading them all back to back.
Look, I get that everyone is testing their blood for infection constantly. I totally do. BUT why the hell is everyone SLAPPING THEIR PALM DOWN? If it were me, and I was putting my hand down on a thing filled with needles, I wouldn’t be slapping a damn thing. I’d be placing it gingerly. Maybe that’s just me, though.
I don’t know. It’s sounding like I totally hated these books, but I didn’t. I found them incredibly annoying by the end (and I didn’t even cry a tiny little bit like everyone kept saying I would) but Grant’s world was compelling enough to continue reading, and overall the series gets 3 stars.
I won’t recommend them, but I won’t tell you not to read them either.
