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Feed by Mira Grant

Tobe Buffenbarger

Title: Feed (Newsflesh #1)

Author: Mira Grant

Publisher: Orbit 2010

Genre: Zombie

Pages: 600

Rating:  5 /5 stars

Reading Challenges: Zombie; Mount TBR; Fall into Reading

How I Got It: I own it!

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.  NOW, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.

A different type of zombie novel, less concerned about the horrors of the zombies and more concerned about the horrors of uninfected humans.  The novel focuses on politics and the news media.  We see how the world post Rising has resorted to fear and false security.  We see groups and individuals fall into the extremes in thinking.  We see a group of bloggers attempting to give people the truth no matter the cause.  I loved every minute of this book.  It shocked me, but deep down didn't surprise me how low some the characters could go in their effort to "save America."  In no way was this book predictive.  I was stunned at every twist and turn.

Except for the comment about zombies, this is a very appropriate comment on the news media and the truth.  I see this everyday.  Scary that things in a post-zombie apocalypse world have so much in common with the state of the world today.  Something to ponder.  And go read this book!

The trouble with news is simple: People, especially ones on the ends of the power spectrum, like it when you're afraid.  The people who have the power want you scared.  They want you walking around paralyzed by the notion that you could die at any moment.  There's always something to be afraid of.  It used to be terrorists.  Now it's zombies.

What does this have to do with the news?  This: The truth isn't scary.  Not when you understand it, not when you understand the repercussions of it, and not when you aren't worried that something's being kept form you.  The truth is only scary when you think part of it might be missing.  And those people?  They like it when you're scared.  So they do their best to sit on the truth, to sensationalize the truth, to filter the truth in ways that make it something you can be afraid of.

If we didn't have to fear the truths we didn't hear, we'd lost the need to fear the ones we did.  People should consider that. (pg. 346)

Newsflesh

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