Review of Feed

Title: Feed
Author: Mira Grant
Published: 2010
Pages: 608
My Rating: 3/5

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so, we created something new, something terrible, that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.


Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives - the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even it it kills them. 


My Review:


I stumbled upon this book randomly when searching for another book with the same name on Amazon. The cover caught my eye, and I was immediately interested as I love zombie books. I haven't read a huge number of books outside the YA gene, and thought this would be a nice change.

This book was not what I expected at all. First of all, when in came in the post, I was expecting a large relatively thin book, but instead it was a small very thick book of 600 pages. Of course that isn't really a problem, but just something that struck me.

It wasn't what I was expecting because the zombie story to it was merely background information. I was expecting a good old zombie action novel, when really there was minimal zombie action at all.  The focus of the book was more centered around the political terrorism conspiracy, and the main characters journalism as they follow the campaign. But I actually found that aspect very interesting, and didn't mind that the zombie story was pushed aside.  This future world that the author created was very well thought out and believable.

The factor that really let this book down was the fact that it didn't need to be 600 pages long. It was so overly drawn out in places. There was too much background information given almost constantly in pages at a time, drawing away from any real plot that was going on. Some of the information, although well thought out as I said, just wasn't needed. Some of it was actually very repetitive and I was having a hard time drilling through all the techno-babble at times. There were also a lot of unnecessary scenes and conversations between characters that drew it out even more.

But in saying this, there were parts of the book that I really liked. The characters for one thing. I really liked that it wasn't your predictable boy-meets-girl, or run-of-the-mill character pool, as I'm sadly used to. I found them all interesting and complex. I also liked how the story played out. It was believable with with great plot-twists, and some really exciting, dramatic scenes.

Overall, I did like this book. It was a very interesting to see journalism and zombies thrown together. The only thing letting it down was the length.