Goodreads Summary:
Rise up while you can. -Georgia Mason
The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising.
The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made.
Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, 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.
***SPOILERS*** If you haven't read books 1 & 2, this review contains spoilers.
My Review:
First, I'm not going to say why/how Georgia managed to come back from the dead. It's explained very early in the book, but I'm going to let you find out by reading. A minor spoiler, but still. All I'm going to say is that Georgia and Shaun are reunited in the most ick-inducing scene possible. If you've read the book, you know what I mean. Second, I'm not going to do a real review of this book. I mean, if you're reading it, it's because you liked the series enough to continue and you're probably pretty much going to read this book no matter what. All I can add to that is that this book was a fitting end to the series. And that, wow, the author manages to keep topping herself as things get worse and worse for the staff of the End Times.
Why zombies? What is it we fear or believe that makes zombies so appealing? When I was a kid, there were two movie franchises- Friday the 13 and Halloween. One of the standard bits in this, and many horror movies, was "The Virgin Always Lives".
The message being, sex kills- in the movies, literally. In real life, sex=AIDS=death. It might have been Jason Voorhees in a hockey mask, but what we were really afraid of was AIDS. So, what does the recent zombie craze say about what we fear now? What are zombies really a symbol of? The original Night of the Living Dead movie from George Romero came out in 1968. The Vietnam Era...a time when mistrust of the government was very high. What's also common to many zombie movies and books is that the zombie uprisings are caused by science gone bad- which you see in Grant's books. So, in the Newsflesh trilogy, Grant paints a world in which bad science and bad government combine. We live in a world where a lot of people do not have faith in government. A poll taken in 2006 found that a third of Americans believe the government was somehow responsible for 9/11.
Of course, Grant's books are not the only zombie books out there. What do other zombie books and series say about our fears at this point in time?
I just finished this book today, and while I loved the way that Georgia was brought in, I kind of felt like the book didn't quite finish as fully as it could have. For all of the detail and explanation that the trilogy offers, I felt the ending of this book to be rushed. Though I did like the the way she chose to tell the final press conference scene. I thought that was really well done!
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