(no subject)

[skygiants]

wickedtrue lent me Mira Grant's Feed a few months back and then I took an embarrassing age to get around to reading it and getting it back to her, which is probably the reason there is not at least one more awesome Feed fic in this year's Yuletide archive. This is the world's loss and I will accept my just blame.

ANYWAY. First of all, what you may already know about Feed: it's a book about blogging!

Okay, what you more likely already knew is that it's a book about zombies, except it's not, really, which is one of its strongest points: it is, very explicitly, a story about a world that contains zombies, but it is not a story about zombies. Because when it comes down to it there's only so many stories about zombies you can tell (they want to eat you! They used to be people! It's very sad! You scream and run away, or shoot their heads in, or both, until you are dead or there are no more zombies), but there's an infinite number of stories you can tell about worlds that happen to have zombies in, which is probably why X With Zombies is so popular. (For example, areyoumymemmy's An Inside Look At a Main Line Society Apocalypse is a story about socialites and witty banter in a world that happens to have zombies in, which is why it's so much fun. Yes, I did just sneak a Yuletide rec into my book review. Deal with it.)

Anyway, this particular story is about a couple of bloggers who are invited to accompany a presidential candidate on a campaign trail, and then there are conspiracies and assassination attempts and so on, in a world that has adjusted to the fact that there are zombies now and we just have to live with it. The worldbuilding is detailed and thoughtful and the characters are cool - something I haven't seen dealt with much in reviews that I found especially interesting is the fact that the protagonist, news-blogger Georgia "George" Mason, has a retinal disability of the kind that entails numerous petty annoyances in her day-to-day-life, which I thought was handled really well. It's also very fast-paced, and overall, I really liked it; in fact, directly after I finished it I bought a copy to shove into the hands of my zombie-loving poli-sci major little brother.

There were, however, a few things that bothered me slightly more than nitpicks. Some are spoilery and I will complain about them here!

1.) Okay, this one actually is a nitpick, but it still bothered me! If we're getting a first-person story I do like some admittance of unreliable narrator, but it's cool that we're apparently expected to take Georgia at her word. HOWEVER. For a woman who keeps telling us how much she is a straight-up news reporter, and all she does is news with as little bias as possible and a VERY OCCASIONAL op/ed, I did find it kind of weird that every single one of her framing newsblog clips is a blatant op/ed. It made it harder for me to trust that she did what we were constantly told she did in her writing, because we were never shown it.

2.) Speaking of unreliable narrators: I kept waiting for Georgia and Shaun to be revealed as unreliable re: their parents, or at least for the parents to be complicated up a bit, and I was pretty disappointed that the end the parents were just as completely shallow and uncaring as we'd been told they were all along. They can still be terrible selfish parents while having some human emotions! There's still time for this to evolve in later books, I guess, but I'm not holding my breath.

3.) Man, guys, was it really necessary for Governor Tate to be that much of an EVIL EVIL REPUBLICAN? He even monologues! (I would give more points for Ryman being a friendly and sympathetic Republican if everything we heard about his political position didn't make him sound exactly like a liberal moderate anyway; I would give more points for Buffy being a friendly and sympathetic person of religious convictions if, uh, well. Yeah.)

ALL THESE THINGS BEING SAID, I still would recommend the book and will definitely be reading the next in the trilogy; I also think it's a more ambitious book than the October Daye books Grant writes as Seanan McGuire, which is probably why its flaws bothered me more.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I love Feed very much and I didn't notice these problems the first (or second) time reading them. taught Feed last month, and my students were bothered by points 1 and 2. Point 1 elicited a few of those irritating "I'm smarter than the author and this is what the author did wrong" papers -- not that I mind people critiquing authors, but the papers were too busy being smug to develop interesting critical vocabulary. The best of the final papers (it had some hilarious title like V'z gur ureb, lbh'er gur ivyynva: yrg'f trg gbtrgure naq znxr n fgbel*) argued that all the characters (especially Georgia and the villain) were stock characters, that Retinal KA was a superhero-type "flaw" that didn't limit Georgia's personality like a real flaw would, and that the use of stock characters helped the political allegory.

*encoded for lack of googleability (http://rot13.com/index.php)

[skygiants]

I still think teaching Feed must have been fascinating - and that does sound like a fascinating paper. (Though I have to say, I kind of love about retinal KA that 50% of what makes it such a huge problem is the beaurocratic annoyance it causes for Georgia. Like, I feel that is much more the point of it in the book than the migraines. Which I love! Because so often the books that deal with a disabled character leave out the consistently irritating little stuff.)

I keep being torn on whether I was more bothered by Point 1 than I should be. I mean, on the one hand, blogging is kind of fundamentally an opinion-based news form; maybe I should just accept that! On the other hand, the whole book rests on the fact that we're supposed to believe Georgia as dedicated to the truth, not her opinion of it.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I too kept waiting for the grand reconciliation with the parents and was almost pleasantly surprised when it didn't come, because they seemed to me to be unpleasant people in a much more complicated sense than, say, Tate. I would have liked to know more about them, but I did get the sense that they were living life on a very particular and very defensive kind of autopilot. They didn't come across to me as devoid of human emotion, just with epic attachment barriers instead of the physical ones that the rest of the world had erected.

Georgia's retinal disbility was one of my favourite things, yes. And the way the tedious security routines were built up and up made it all the more devastating when things started to go wrong.

[skygiants]

I'll be honest, what it really made me want desperately was fic from the perspective of their mom. I think she could be a really fascinating character, when not flattened out by George and Shaun's perspective.

Oh man, yeah - it built up a great sense of inevitability (you knew once those simultaneous blood tests were introduced in the first chapter that one day George or Shaun was going to test red) that managed to be shocking all thesame.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

YES. I think fic about either of their parents would be great, but especially the Irwin-mother. (IRWIN. I LOVE IT.)

[skygiants]

(HAHAHA ME TOO. It is so accurate! Every so often I would pause to wonder how much news mileage, exactly, could be gotten from wandering out to poke zombies, and then remembered their namesake and decided probably infinite.)

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

I freaking loved Feed. A lot. A lot a lot. All the time.

I am not sure how I feel about point 1, and will have to think about it. But I think point 2 is very important! Mostly because I feel like we kept getting little hints about how complicated Georgia and Shaun's parents really were (their mother putting on different emotions at the drop of a hat, some one-off line about her "burying her emotions with Philip" or something similar), and I wanted to see more of them. I can see why we didn't, but I wonder if we'll get more of them in the sequel, what with the serious case of crazy that Shaun seems to have contracted and the general all-around survivor's guilt.

About point 3: I dunno, he didn't feel too over-the-top to me, I guess because I know people like that. Many people. Far too many people for my own comfort. Including people who monologue to me on why I am right and they are wrong. IDK, maybe it comes off as over-the-top on the page? I was too busy cheering Shaun on and reeling.

FABULOUS BOOK. Y/Y.

[skygiants]

I really do hope we'll see more of them in the sequels! I mean, there are definitely going to have to be characters who can serve as a foil for Shaun's, uh, serious emotional trauma (and I don't think Inner Mind Georgia counts, INTERESTED THOUGH I AM to see how that plays out.) But on the other hand it seems like Shaun is pretty emphatically cutting ties at the end of this book, so . . . I dunno.

Honestly, you know, this may seem like a little thing again, but it's the fact that he was pro looser-restrictions-on-large-animals that put him over the top for me - that detail didn't seem to make any sense with his general mindset and platform at all, except to give Georgia more room to rant about him. (Well, that and the cold dead eyes.)

Nonetheless, still y to your statement of course!

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

This is true! But I hope he talks to them anyway. THEY WOULD BE SO USEFUL. The people who dealt with losing a loved one by becoming completely emotionless vs. Shaun's own... somewhat innovative... method of what I'm sure is probably some form of schizophrenia! It would be awesome!

Oh, I can see that. I think I somehow missed that...? Or thought he just said that to get on the Ryman ticket (since they were horse farmers from way back). But possibly that is just fanwanking. And anyway that section of the book is all about Shaun being BADASS AWESOME and crying for why.

[skygiants]

I HOPE SO TOO.

It's way in the initial rundown of Reasons Georgia Hates Tate's Politics, actually, that's basically just a flat-out List of Unlikeable Republican Positions. And the cold dead eyes come right after that. I think if we hadn't had all that telegraphed to begin with, the epic showdown and the monologue at all at the end wouldn't have bothered me anywhere near as much.

[wickedtrue.livejournal.com]

Ha! This is a book that shows the different things we want in our fiction. I LOOOVED the book. I ate it in one sitting and cackled the whole time.

I just accepted from the very beginning that Georgia was entirely unreliable and that the world (and herself) weren't what she thought. I loved her and was entirely entertained the whole time going "the lady doth say that too much" about her newsie-ness.

The tie up was... *shrug* Honestly, speaking from my own political background, that's all I really expect in this sort of fiction. It was heavy handed, but like Rym said above, I accepted it as more of a big, smacking metaphor for what was happening through the whole book world than anything else.

Honestly, I had to pause half way through and go ask Gen if Seanan was into twincest. While I really enjoyed that all the characters were messed up and all suffering from PTSD in some way because the world had fallen apart, that sibling relationship tweeked me.

[skygiants]

Well, I mean, you and zombies DO have a history. <3 I did like the book! For the most part the caveats I had didn't get in the way of my enjoyment, but I felt like they were big enough I should talk about them.

HAHAHA Feather, I haven't actually looked at the Yuletide fic for Feed yet, but I have this strong suspicion - is it all twincest? My bet is that it's at least 50% twincest. I mean, this is the internet.

[wickedtrue.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of them yet either because I'm convinced they're all twincest!! D:!!!!

[skygiants]

The eternal tragedy of the internet: In any canon with interesting siblings, AT LEAST 50% of the fic will be sibcest. CALL IT WINCHESTER'S LAW.

[batyatoon]

(the Tams were there first I'm just sayin')

[skygiants]

(The only reason it's not Tam's Law is because Winchester's Law has a better ring. THEY ARE HOWEVER AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF COROLLARY EVIDENCE.)

[agonistes]

...okay, so, you may not have been around the night I was like "ADVICE: NEVER PLAY APPLES TO APPLES WITH TEA PARTY MEMBERS" the night we had the family Christmas gathering in Atlanta, at which point seventeen-year-old gay cousin (who I hadn't seen since he was, like... four? six?) presented me with a copy of Feed, and said "IT'S ALL POLITICAL AND STUFF YOU WILL LOVE IT". His father is the kind of Republican who makes Glenn Beck look left-wing.

Seanan is not one of my favorite people, speaking both personally and creatively.

Zombies squick me and I don't like dystopia.

I really don't like it when Republicans are portrayed as cardboard villains, especially if said cardboard villainy is associated with the South and/or rural places. Same goes for cardboard villains with religious convictions.

Do I want to read this book, or do I want to find it a new home?

[skygiants]

Hmmmm. Given all this - yeah, I am not sure this book would be for you. The cardboard villainy is not associated with the South, but it is emphatically associated with religious convictions - pretty much all religious convictions, with the dramatic exception of a saintly moderate - and the rest of it would probably hit your squick buttons more than would be worth it.