Mira Grant
Orbit Books
October 4th, 2016
This novel is #4 in the acclaimed Newsflesh series. We leave the Masons behind to pull the timeline back for another perspective. Feedback also takes place during the presidential run, but from the perspective of another team, covering another candidate.
To provide a bit of context, the Newsflesh series takes place in a near future US where a zombie apocalypse has occurred. Two different lab engineered viruses met and mutated, causing a virus that lays dormant in creatures large and complex enough to carry it that will cause animation upon death, or spontaneous death and animation for those infected with blood from others. The virus encodes a basic need for survival and impetus to spread.
No one ever wants to leave their homes anymore if they can help it, so they live vicariously through bloggers. Different categories of bloggers produce different content–Newsies focus on the hard news as it happens, and are all about the facts. Irwins (that reference should be almost self explanatory) create news and entertainment by being in the thick of things, baiting and killing zombies for the titillation of their audience. Fictionals write fictional content, often focusing on stories of before everything went belly up.
In this particular round of presidential primaries, one of the more favored senators to win–Senator Ryman–decides to have his campaign covered by a blogging team to show every minute and all the action. It creates a frenzy in the blogging community to get in on the action, money, and eyeballs that kind of opportunity would afford. In the first 3 Newsflesh novels, we follow the brother and sister duo of the Masons and their team. In Feedback, we see events unfold from another perspective as the remaining candidates all follow Ryman’s lead and hire blogging teams of their own.
This team consists of a plucky Irwin Ash, who is married in name only to Newsie Ben (she’s Irish, needed US citizenship, and Ben is a friend), Fictional Audrey (Ash’s girlfriend) and techie/MUA Mat (a genderfluid character who consistently gets they/them pronouns. YAY!). They follow Democratic Senator Susan Kilburn. If you’re familiar with the series, things unravel pretty quickly, and the team is in danger at every turn.
Mira Grant is author Seanan McGuire, and like everything of hers I’ve read, Feedback is spectacular. I’ve been waiting a long time to see more in this series, and I was delighted with this addition to it. An October must buy for zombies and conspiracies!
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.