Feed by Mira Grant

Review of Feed by Mira Grant. Feed is a political near future sci-fi thriller that follows a group of bloggers on the campaign train after the zombie apocalypse. A new normal has been established and people are self isolating in their home.

My review from 2013 of Feed by Mira Grant as well as thoughts on the rest of the Newsflesh Trilogy

Title: Feed
Series: Newsflesh Trilogy
Author: Mira Grant aka Seanan McGuire
Genre: Science fiction, near future, political thriller, zombies, dystopia, post zombie apocalypse

I don’t like zombies, I really don’t. Apparently unless it is Mira Grant who writes them. I think this works for me because it isn’t a horror book, it is a political thriller, which is actually right up my alley.

I really like that this book is told by a rather unreliable narrator who isn’t all that likeable at first. She isn’t a person you would instantly like, but I don’t think many people in Feed’s world really is. They all seem rather wacky really. No wonder with the world they live in.

The worldbuilding

The worldbuilding is one of the things I really like in the Newsflesh Trilogy. It is near future enough that the technology isn’t totally crazy but the world itself has changed immensely.

It is a world driven by fear, and with fairly reasonable reasons. There is zombies everywhere for crying out loud. But the fear has been allowed, perhaps even stirred so that it controls everything. If people are afraid enough, they do not really think. If they do not think but just react, they are way easier to control.

The book was originally written in 2006 which shows in a bit of the world building around bloggers. That does feel a bit dated, but the rest of it does not feel out-of-place at all.

A captivating read

Feed had me staying up till early in the morning forcing me to keep turning the pages and I was totally glued to it. It also had me laughing and crying a bit. I am pretty sure there are parts of the book that are quite tear-stained.

I have to say that a lot of the book makes a lot more sense once you have read the two next books and the characters become a lot more sympathetic as we go along. Plus there is a crazy scientist with a huge dog and an octopus in one of the later books that you will not get if you don’t read the other two books, so do that!

I can wholeheartedly recommend the series and have done so to quite a few of my friends.

EDIT 2023:

If you reading the books thinking that the group of protagonists are youtubers and tiktokers instead of bloggers, then it makes a lot of sense. While blogging might have gone the citizen journalist has not gone away. What today feels unrealistic is the fact that half the bloggers are not alt-right people screaming from their basements. Also the fact that people follow the CDC guidelines feels wildly optimistic – to the point that this reads like HopePunk today. It is very much not written as such though.

McGuire as talked about that she after the Trump election she can’t write in the universe anymore as she isn’t hopeful enough about the sanity of the american population when it comes to politics. I wonder how she feels after the pandemic – I bet she would laugh at you until you went away.

The stats: Feed by Mira Grant

Published: 2010 by Orbit
Pages: 571 pages
Read: First reading, July, 2012

Author: Female, white, disabled and neurodiverse, queer, USA
The protagonists: Female, white, USA

This review was originally posted: December 2, 2013. Updated and edited June 26, 2023