Blackout by Mira Grant
Nov. 4th, 2013 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
The world didn’t end when the zombies came.
We just wished it had.
The conspiracy that rules post-zombie America is alive and well. The same can’t be said of the bloggers who dared to tell the truth as they found it. Now, with too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, Shaun Mason and his team must face mad scientists, zombie bears and rogue government agencies – and if there’s one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this:
Things can always get worse.
It’s several weeks after DEADLINE. Shaun and his team are hiding out with Dr Abbey but when word reaches them that the government’s planning to abandon Florida to the zombies created by the CDC’s new vector, the team decide to get Alaric’s younger sister out of a refugee centre there and bust the conspiracy right open. Doing so means seeking help from old friends and some people Shaun would rather never see again and a trip to Seattle to find The Monkey, a legendary ID and document forger with both the CDC and the legions of the dead dogging their every step.
Meanwhile Georgia’s woken up in a CDC facility. She knows she’s a clone and she knows that the CDC is involved. What she doesn’t know is how. Or why. But she’s determined that she won’t be their pawn for long …
The conclusion to Mira Grant’s zombie horror trilogy is a fast-paced, roller-coaster ride that draws together the various plot strands into a satisfying conclusion. Some of the twists weren’t that surprising, the bad guys are cardboard cut-outs, Grant overwrites at times (I lost count of the number of times Shaun reminds us of his Georgia hallucinations) and the blog team are somewhat samey character-wise, but the book nevertheless held my attention from beginning to end, there are some great one-liners, one very emotional character death and there were enough zombie action scenes to keep me interested.
Central to the trilogy has always been the relationship between Georgia and Shaun, which I found compelling although so much attention is given to this that every other relationship suffers by default (especially that between Becks and Shaun, which I felt could have been explored in more depth given the events in DEADLINE. I believed in the reaction of the other bloggers to Shaun’s increasingly powerful hallucinations and tendency to speak to himself but would have liked more scenes between Shaun and Dr Abbey to explore the medical effects of what happened to him. Georgia’s scenes are tense, I loved the explanation for her return but wished the CDC characters hadn’t been so thinly drawn.
There was enough zombie action to keep me interested and I loved the return of some characters from the previous books. All in all, the book ties together the loose ends into a satisfying conclusion and I will definitely read Grant’s next series.
The Verdict:
The conclusion to Mira Grant’s zombie horror trilogy is a fast-paced, roller-coaster ride that draws together the various plot strands into a satisfying conclusion. Some of the twists weren’t that surprising, the bad guys are cardboard cut-outs, Grant overwrites at times (I lost count of the number of times Shaun reminds us of his Georgia hallucinations) and the blog team are somewhat samey character-wise, but the book nevertheless held my attention from beginning to end, there are some great one-liners, one very emotional character death and there were enough zombie action scenes to keep me interested.
We just wished it had.
The conspiracy that rules post-zombie America is alive and well. The same can’t be said of the bloggers who dared to tell the truth as they found it. Now, with too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, Shaun Mason and his team must face mad scientists, zombie bears and rogue government agencies – and if there’s one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this:
It’s several weeks after DEADLINE. Shaun and his team are hiding out with Dr Abbey but when word reaches them that the government’s planning to abandon Florida to the zombies created by the CDC’s new vector, the team decide to get Alaric’s younger sister out of a refugee centre there and bust the conspiracy right open. Doing so means seeking help from old friends and some people Shaun would rather never see again and a trip to Seattle to find The Monkey, a legendary ID and document forger with both the CDC and the legions of the dead dogging their every step.
Meanwhile Georgia’s woken up in a CDC facility. She knows she’s a clone and she knows that the CDC is involved. What she doesn’t know is how. Or why. But she’s determined that she won’t be their pawn for long …
The conclusion to Mira Grant’s zombie horror trilogy is a fast-paced, roller-coaster ride that draws together the various plot strands into a satisfying conclusion. Some of the twists weren’t that surprising, the bad guys are cardboard cut-outs, Grant overwrites at times (I lost count of the number of times Shaun reminds us of his Georgia hallucinations) and the blog team are somewhat samey character-wise, but the book nevertheless held my attention from beginning to end, there are some great one-liners, one very emotional character death and there were enough zombie action scenes to keep me interested.
Central to the trilogy has always been the relationship between Georgia and Shaun, which I found compelling although so much attention is given to this that every other relationship suffers by default (especially that between Becks and Shaun, which I felt could have been explored in more depth given the events in DEADLINE. I believed in the reaction of the other bloggers to Shaun’s increasingly powerful hallucinations and tendency to speak to himself but would have liked more scenes between Shaun and Dr Abbey to explore the medical effects of what happened to him. Georgia’s scenes are tense, I loved the explanation for her return but wished the CDC characters hadn’t been so thinly drawn.
There was enough zombie action to keep me interested and I loved the return of some characters from the previous books. All in all, the book ties together the loose ends into a satisfying conclusion and I will definitely read Grant’s next series.
The Verdict:
The conclusion to Mira Grant’s zombie horror trilogy is a fast-paced, roller-coaster ride that draws together the various plot strands into a satisfying conclusion. Some of the twists weren’t that surprising, the bad guys are cardboard cut-outs, Grant overwrites at times (I lost count of the number of times Shaun reminds us of his Georgia hallucinations) and the blog team are somewhat samey character-wise, but the book nevertheless held my attention from beginning to end, there are some great one-liners, one very emotional character death and there were enough zombie action scenes to keep me interested.
