Deadline: The Newsflesh Trilogy: Book 2 [Paperback]

I really enjoyed Feed and was looking forward to the sequel. However, possible spoilers ahead, Deadline was missing a few key ingredients that made Feed so good. It also included stuff that really wasn't necessary. If you liked Feed for all the action and fighting, you really might not enjoy the sequel.

As a read, its pretty good. Its just as accessible and believable as Feed and Mira Grant paints an engaging picture of post-apocalypse. The characters are not great - we really only learn anything about Sean Mason as a personality, everyone else just exists in his world. Or head. The development of the plot from Feed works well enough for Deadline to feel planned, as opposed to just tacked onto an unexpectedly successful original story. But it is overly long - around 600 pages - largely due to way too many explanations that Sean is crazy and doesn't care what anyone thinks of this and far far too many descriptions of blood tests. Blood tests to get into buildings. Blood tests to get out. Blood tests to get into cars and into shops. Blood tests to go houses, garages, and the toilet. Yeah, technically that last one comes in the sneak preview of the final book in the trilogy, but you get my meaning.

If you enjoyed Feed, you'll probably have that 'what happened next?' kind of feeling. You have to know how deep the conspiracy goes and who was really behind Tate. In which case you'll get something out of this sequel. Go ahead and buy it.

But, here's the big problem with Deadline - this is a possible spoiler, but I doubt it. Anyway:

Deadline is not a zombie novel, it is a thriller. I say this because there are next to no zombies in the whole book. Seriously: there are almost zero undead in this book. There's a few in the prologue, we hear some about 400 pages later, and there is one fight with some undead about a hundred pages after that. Thats it.

Now I get it, I think. This is not supposed to be a book about the undead, as such, its about the world they exist in. This is the fabulous new breath of life certain critics claim Newsflesh is to the genre. But it still seems a little disingenuous to market this book as a zombie book and then just use them as background. I can read lots of conspiracy thrillers without zombies, but I choose not to - I like survival horror, not political thrillers.

Hopefully this is a deliberate tonal choice by the author. The first novel was about the living having to deal with the ever-living. The second book has no zombies, but its protagonist is obsessed with his dead sister who lives on in his head. She is the zombie, get it? And hopefully that means the third novel can get back to some real undead action with some actual locomotive dead folks to fight.

Because I will have to buy it. As bereft of the undead as Deadline is, and as full of extraneous descriptions of insanity and blood-testing equipment as it is, Deadline still managed to keep me hooked and turning page after page until I had read it all. Telegraphed plot-twist and all, I'll be eagerly awaiting the conclusion of Newsflesh and hoping it is a more concise and gory entry in the series.

What's Good About It

After being blown away by the first instalment of this trilogy, I was excited to get my hands on Deadline for ages. And it didn't disappoint. Unlike so many second parts of trilogies which are flabby around the edges, stalling for time, and with no real sense of threat, Deadline only escalates the tension. Shaun's deteriorating mental state only makes him more of a loose cannon, and in a world populated by the reanimated dead, being a loose cannon is a very very dangerous thing to be.

With the conspiracy going even deeper, there's plenty of mystery to unravel. Once again, Grant's world building is second to none. Her story is all the more sinister for the CDC procedural details woven into the narrative. The story never seems to lose pace for the extra detail, which is a very good thing, because such a level of detail could easily bog the story down. With a lot of the heavier world building work done before in Feed, Deadline doesn't have to work as hard for its realism, giving it more space to explore the terrifying world and politics its characters live in.

And speaking of characters, the transition to Shaun's point of view is seamless. His character is very different to Georgia's cold, analytical mind, but he works just as well as a vehicle to drive the story. And as slightly creepy (a fact that Mira Grant doesn't shy away from, which pleased me) as Shaun and Georgia's mind sharing relationship becomes, it's a fantastic way of keeping Georgia in the story, in a way that never feels forced or twee.

What's Not So Good

Once again, if you're looking for a cheap thrills zombie apocalypse, this isn't really what you're looking for.

Rating: 5/5

Much as I like Zombies and end of the world books, this is much more than that. Well written and more of a thriller/conspracy novel that keeps you turning the pages and with a surprising twist at the end. Now have to read the next book in the series as soon as possible.