Feed is the story of a group of young idealistic internet journalists on the campaign trail with charismatic Presidential hopeful Peter Ryman. What at first seems to be the story of their lives turns out to be quite literally the story oftheir lives. Oh and did I mention zombies? Yeah zombies too
I’m just being coy here, it really is an accurate representation of the book. It’s first and foremost about the rise of internet culture with zombies merely as the backdrop. The undead act as a catalyst for the rapidly changing social constructs. That’s not to diminish the threat of the horde of course and they do play a vital role in the plot but the main focus is on the importance of citizen journalism and the ideals of net neutrality and libertarian-ism. To say this is a left leaning book would be an understatement. Not to the point where it ever feels preachy or laid on too thick but the subtext is pretty clear. Corporate funded mainstream media outlets bad, Independent alternative internet blogsgood.
For the most part I really enjoyed this back and towards the climatic finale I really couldn’t put it down but there were one or two things I did have an issue with. One of which was the dialogue: Being set in a post zombie outbreak world meant there were was a lot of world building to be done and a lot of this exposition takes the form of dialogue and it just came across as quite clunky and awkward in parts. I understand the impetus but it just wasn’t handled as gracefully as it could have been and it did take me out of the experience a few times.
On the other hand though there was a great amount going on this book which I loved. I find it’s quite hard to shock me with dramatic plot twists as most of the time they’re heavily telegraphed and cliche. Not so with Feed. I really was taken aback and found myself actually pretty emotional when a certain thing happened to a certain important character.
Really looking forward to continuing the series and I will be following the future work of Mira Grant with much anticipation.
stuartkent37 