Review: Deadline by Mira Grant

Spoiler Alert!

Warning: If you have not read the first book of the Newsfeed Trilogy, Feed, this contains spoilers for that book!

Goodreads Summary:

Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as fun when you've lost as much as he has.

But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.

Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.

My Review:
Ah, a zombie road trip book. Reminded me of what has become one of my favorite zombie movies- Zombieland. So, it's appropriate that the theme music is off the Zombieland soundtrack. But because it's Metallica, and a lot of people think that Lars Ulrich is a d-bag, I'm throwing in another tune. And you can never go wrong with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

This book wasn't as good as the first book of this series. I think that in books that involve world-building, the first novel is special when it's great. Kind of like the Hunger Games. It's a world that you just fall in love with, but how do you top that? Sadly, the answer is that you really can't. I felt let down by the second Hunger Games book as I was let down by Deadline- precisely because the first novel in the series was so great. It's magical to create a special literary world, but once you return...it's not new any more. So I'm always a little let down. Despite this, it was still a great book.

The book's characters are reporters. So it's no surprise that the issue of truth is important. In the first book of the Newsflesh series, one of the issues posed is, "Do we believe a comforting lie or a painful truth?" In Deadline the question is, "Is truth more important than anything?" If you tell people the truth, but it will undermine the overall public safety, do you still tell the truth? Is Truth more important than Life? Because Shaun and company learn about something in this book that, if they make it public, could kill quite a few people. One of the things I love about the series is that the answer to this question is something the characters struggle with- as I think most of us would. 


What I didn't like about this book...no Georgia. As Shaun keeps saying (basically)- he's the guy that pokes stuff with sticks. Georgia's supposed to be the one, because she's a Newsie- that handles the telling the truth. And because this book is about that conflict between safety and truth, it needed Georgia to provide that tension. Either by being the one to defend truth for the sake of truth or to struggle with the possibility of burying that truth. What I also didn't like about this book...Shaun has sex. No, it's not any kind of "weird" sex, but something happens after that struck me as just beyond gross. (Don't worry, not involving any kind of sex act at all. Are you intrigued, though? You'll have to read the book, I'm not telling.)


The ending though was just, Wow! Wow, I have to get the next book and read it now. Because something happens at the end and you just need to know why. I can't imagine reading this book when it first got released and having to wait a whole year. 


Overall rating: 3 1/2 stars
Genre Rating: 4 brains