Deadline
Deadline, the second book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy and sequel to Feed, was a really difficult book to get through. I actually walked away from it for a couple of weeks because I had so many issues with the main character. But the plot eventually pulled me back and I actually read the last half of the book pretty quickly (and only partly because I have so much time on my hands right now).
Shaun takes over the narration of this book after his sister dies at the end of Feed. While I liked him fine in the first book, being inside his head destroyed most of my goodwill. It's quickly revealed that George's death has driven Shaun insane. He has vivid hallucinations that she's talking to him and he has violent tendencies, striking out at his employees and friends seemingly at random.
I don't think these traits would bother me so much except that Shaun recognizes them both as negative things that are driving away his friends and proceeds to do absolutely nothing about it, deciding he'd rather be violent and insane and cling to the memory of his dead sister than try to have relationships with the people who are still alive. It made it almost impossible to sympathize with him and the fact that this is a reaction to grief made it hard to hate him. I spent most of the book feeling a sort of exasperated pity and wondering why anyone continued to stick by his side. If my boss broke my nose, promised he'd never do it again, then proceeded to give me a black eye the next time he had a bad day, I sure as hell wouldn't give my life for his.
His hallucinations felt off, too. In the first book, George came off as smarter than Shaun, both more intelligent and more knowledgeable. She had to explain things to him, catch him up, tell him what to do. My biggest problem is that she's still doing this when she's nothing more than a voice in his head. Regardless of whether he's hallucinating George, she shouldn't still be smarter than him.
But on to the rest of the book. Like Feed, the plot of Deadline takes a while to kick in. The conspiracy that was revealed in the first book is revealed to go even deeper than anyone expected. It leads to some unexpected twists and turns and a really tense road trip (side gripe: I don't know how they crossed Colorado without stopping for gas or why the storm followed them from Kansas to California, and it made me lose a little faith in the author).
If you can get past the un-likability of Shaun and the idiocy of his staff deciding not to ditch him, the book is pretty exciting. Sadly, it doesn't come close to the quality of the first book. Even more sad, it ends on the most unbelievable cliffhanger that means I'll have to read the last book.
Shaun takes over the narration of this book after his sister dies at the end of Feed. While I liked him fine in the first book, being inside his head destroyed most of my goodwill. It's quickly revealed that George's death has driven Shaun insane. He has vivid hallucinations that she's talking to him and he has violent tendencies, striking out at his employees and friends seemingly at random.
I don't think these traits would bother me so much except that Shaun recognizes them both as negative things that are driving away his friends and proceeds to do absolutely nothing about it, deciding he'd rather be violent and insane and cling to the memory of his dead sister than try to have relationships with the people who are still alive. It made it almost impossible to sympathize with him and the fact that this is a reaction to grief made it hard to hate him. I spent most of the book feeling a sort of exasperated pity and wondering why anyone continued to stick by his side. If my boss broke my nose, promised he'd never do it again, then proceeded to give me a black eye the next time he had a bad day, I sure as hell wouldn't give my life for his.
His hallucinations felt off, too. In the first book, George came off as smarter than Shaun, both more intelligent and more knowledgeable. She had to explain things to him, catch him up, tell him what to do. My biggest problem is that she's still doing this when she's nothing more than a voice in his head. Regardless of whether he's hallucinating George, she shouldn't still be smarter than him.
But on to the rest of the book. Like Feed, the plot of Deadline takes a while to kick in. The conspiracy that was revealed in the first book is revealed to go even deeper than anyone expected. It leads to some unexpected twists and turns and a really tense road trip (side gripe: I don't know how they crossed Colorado without stopping for gas or why the storm followed them from Kansas to California, and it made me lose a little faith in the author).
If you can get past the un-likability of Shaun and the idiocy of his staff deciding not to ditch him, the book is pretty exciting. Sadly, it doesn't come close to the quality of the first book. Even more sad, it ends on the most unbelievable cliffhanger that means I'll have to read the last book.
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