jenny✨'s Reviews > Feed

Moral of the story: Don’t reread 3-star books, because you’re inevitably going to find MORE WRONG* WITH THEM.

Georgia narrates the story in a mildly pompous tone that absolutely grated on me. Her, Buffy, and Shaun’s irreverence was clearly meant to be funny and/or slick, but instead came off just plain obnoxious. And not to knock their smelted-in-the-zombie-apocalypse sibling bond or anything, but there was something so... Flowers in the Attic about Shaun and Georgia. (I mean, they’re grown-ass adults sleeping in the same hotel bed—though surely there was a budget for separate beds if not rooms—with him only clad in boxer shorts!! Yeesh.)

Yet I still read this damn 600-pager TWO. WHOLE. TIMES. There is no one to blame for this but me.

It's the zombies. Zombies are my X factor. I did it for the zombies, okay?

Also: Why Mira decided it was necessary to take the piss out of every woman side character is beyond me. From scantily clad, unnamed girls handing out cigarettes, to the interchangeable brunette interns (“a Jenny, a Jamie, or a Jill”), to the constant lampooning of a female politician—“Kirsten ‘Knockers’ Wagman”—whose only notable feature is how she decided to get a boob job to run for office...

Seriously? Like we don’t have enough “women are bimbos” stereotypes floating around to last several lifetimes? (“Floating” is too kind a term. More like aggregating oppressively and insidiously in workplaces, media, and academic, domestic, and political spheres.)

I will say, though, that reading this book—a story following the presidential campaign of a Republican senator—has been an interesting experience in 2020. I was highlighting passages like:

I can’t tell you to choose Senator Ryman as the Republican Party candidate just because I don’t like Governor Tate. But I can tell you this: The governor’s biases, like mine, are a matter of public record. Do your research. Do your homework. Learn what this man would do to our country in the name of preserving a brand of freedom that is as destructive as it is impossible to secure. Know your enemy.
That’s what freedom really means.

Those last few sentences! Shivers!

Bottom line: I can’t deny that this one was just a steaming heap of zombie-ungulate poop at times. That being said, I revise my opening statement a teeeeny bit: I was definitely better able to appreciate the political themes—and core messages—of this book because I didn’t skim just to read the zombie action bits, like I did the first time around. And as a result, I loved the horror world-building (so detailed, so verbose as to rival Stephen King) and even enjoyed some moments with Shaun and Georgia, especially toward the end.



* ofc, by “wrong” I mean personally disagreeable

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I REALLY want to read Rise, the ginormous anthology of Newsflesh stories that I got at Indigo last summer for $4, but in order to make the most out of those novellas/companion stories, I need to refresh myself with the series.

AKA re-read Feed and actually get to reading the sequels. 😂

So here we go! Tackling zombie doorstopper #1....