A review by jefffrane
Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection by Mira Grant
5.0
This book has been out for several years now and I'm guessing that real Mira Grant fans have already, er, devoured it. I came to it via Seanan McGuire and genuine curiosity about how that author could also produce fairly straight-forward horror. This is Mira Grant's take on the zombie apocalypse (is it now a "proverbial" zombie apocalypse?) and it's no surprise that Grant/McGuire has created something quite different than George Romero. McGuire is something of a master of the novella and Rise collects all of her stories about The Rising along with some bonus material.
Much of the book is framed by a fictional investigative news network that was created in response to the devastation of the zombies (not all of which are human). She sets things up with the scientific background of the plague(s) triggering the disaster, then segues to an amusing(?) and creepy tale of zombies at the San Diego Comic Con. The framing then allows her to demonstrate the apocalypse on a global scale, setting the story in Australia before she moves back to more personal stories. People are something else that McGuire is masterful with and what amazed me was realizing, late in the story, that she had seeded all of the major characters in the concluding chapters throughout the book, with hints and references from other characters. By the time we actually meet the two central characters we've gotten an enormous level of background on them in a very casual fashion.
But even when we finally meet Georgia and Shaun and we know how remarkable their lives have been, McGuire tantalizes us with references to events and adventures in their lives that many authors would have spun into entire novels. And it feels as if we could read those novels and that they must exist somewhere, but it is so much more delicious that they don't.
The more I read Grant/McGuire the more impressed I am. I realize that others were way ahead of me on this and I'm OK with that.
This is a big fat book. Please pretend it isn't and dive in.
Much of the book is framed by a fictional investigative news network that was created in response to the devastation of the zombies (not all of which are human). She sets things up with the scientific background of the plague(s) triggering the disaster, then segues to an amusing(?) and creepy tale of zombies at the San Diego Comic Con. The framing then allows her to demonstrate the apocalypse on a global scale, setting the story in Australia before she moves back to more personal stories. People are something else that McGuire is masterful with and what amazed me was realizing, late in the story, that she had seeded all of the major characters in the concluding chapters throughout the book, with hints and references from other characters. By the time we actually meet the two central characters we've gotten an enormous level of background on them in a very casual fashion.
But even when we finally meet Georgia and Shaun and we know how remarkable their lives have been, McGuire tantalizes us with references to events and adventures in their lives that many authors would have spun into entire novels. And it feels as if we could read those novels and that they must exist somewhere, but it is so much more delicious that they don't.
The more I read Grant/McGuire the more impressed I am. I realize that others were way ahead of me on this and I'm OK with that.
This is a big fat book. Please pretend it isn't and dive in.