Blackout

I ended up liking Blackout, the third and final book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, much better than Deadline. But still not as much as Feed. I think this is going to end up being one of those trilogies where I just ignore the existence of the second and third books. Like His Dark Materials.

I am so glad George was back for this book. I actually considered skipping all of Shaun's chapters and just reading George's. But I decided I'd probably miss too much of the story that way.
George is ultimately what kept me going through this trilogy. The science is unbelievable to a point that I ended up writing it off as magic so I could accept the story on its own merits. I mean, clones of dead people being nearly exact matches of the people they're cloned from? Memories and everything? Also sexually transmitted immunities? (That is what Grant was getting at with Shaun, right?)

Anyway, Grant did a decent job expanding the conspiracy beyond the first book to take up a whole trilogy. Even though I didn't feel surprised by anything revealed in the bad guy monologue at the end of the book, it was definitely more than I would have guessed from the first book. And the action was still really exciting, especially when George and Shaun finally meet about halfway through the book.

I don't know, though. I'm ultimately disappointed because the first book was just so good. Maybe the rest of the trilogy could never have lived up to that. But at least this book was more engaging than the second one.

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