Another FANTASTIC entry in the Newflesh series

Mira Grant (pen name for Seanan McGuire) has done it again! Her Newsflesh series combines the survival horror of zombie apocalypse with the best political intrigue thrillers out there, while spicing it up with some really tough questions on human nature, the job of the news media as the 4th estate, and what it means to be a medical practitioner, among other things. I HIGHLY recommend this audiobook.

3 people found this helpful

NEED MOAR

Any additional comments?

Those who insist that this book is some kind of "list fulfillment" in regards to diversity have never hung out in the poorer parts of the East Bay. The characters and their relationships were great. These are characters I can relate to. I need more about them! Please!!

I didn't need the exposition on gender, pronouns, and homelessness in LGBTQ youth, but--based on other reviews--I imagine other people did. It felt much more like the author was letting loose in this book, not trying to hold things back in hopes of selling copies.

There were some mistakes in pronunciation. The author says Ash's full name is pronounced "ace-lynn" and the complete butchering of Buffy's last name made me cringe. Otherwise, the performance was great.

2 people found this helpful

Decent story, not sure if really needed

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. The narrator's accent, while appropriate for the character, made it rough for listening in longer batches than a few hours.

Any additional comments?

I liked having more story in the Newsflesh universe, but to be honest this doesn't appear to really add much to the series. I still enjoyed it but was looking for something else.

5 people found this helpful

The worst narration I've ever heard

What disappointed you about Feedback?

I've listened to over 50 audiobooks and this stands out as the worst narration. I don't usually have strong opinions about it, but my god. There's a lot of the protaganist's inner dialogue and for whatever reason the narrator decided to draw out nearly every vowel sound. Ash is supposed to be this Irwin badass - and yet every thought is expressed like a plea. Listening to any other character was a relief.

Would you be willing to try another book from Mira Grant? Why or why not?

I've listened to all of the Mira Grant books and will do so so in the future as along as there's a different narrator.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

She made me hate the main character with her incessant vowel dragging.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Ear pain.

8 people found this helpful

Spin off with charm and queers!

This was a lovely and creative spin off from the main series. At times it was slightly repetitive, but only because it could be easily read as a stand alone book. The characters were queer community in a way that made me able to imagine what my life in the world created by the full series would be like. I loved it.

Kept me on the edge of my seat with unexpected twists throughout. Characters had complexity and depth, relatable and faced with hard choices. In depth thought about the ethical dilemmas of post apocalyptic science that are still relevant today- just because you can do something, should you? Is there any “going back” post world altering changes?

I’m now going straight for Mira Grants next spin off and then other series. Can’t wait!

4 people found this helpful

Not as good but still interesting

Enjoyed the story and seeing the “other side” but not enough of the story of the other side of the news flesh books

1 person found this helpful

So happy to be back in the Newsflesh world!

Newsflesh is a really unique take on the post-zompocalypse genre, presenting the most realistic setting for the state of the United States politics and journalism that I've ever seen. This installment continues that realism to account for the people who would be more on the fringes of that society, the people who wouldn't have the privileges available to the white, wealthy, and straight Masons of the original series. I was absolutely thrilled with the new characters and loved following their journey.

While this book does take place during the events of the original trilogy, I think it can be read alone with little issue. It contains depictions of LGBTQ people, nonbinary individuals, people of color, and Democratic presidential candidates, so if those topics bother you...get over yourself it's 2019.

1 person found this helpful

Read Other Reviews with Care

I've read through the front page reviews of this book and wanted to offer a bit of advice for reading them. I put off listening/reading this book because of some of those reviews, and I found that irritating when I finally did come around to listening to/reading it because they so extremely misrepresented things. That's why I'm writing my own review.

Gender politics are important in this book, and if you are personally uncomfortable with that subject area when it gets extreme, then you will have issues with this book. If you want to expand your understanding, give it a try. If you don't and you read it anyway, don't come back here and criticize it because it has gender politics as a theme. People mistake not liking something for it being of poor quality and that is what I see in a lot of reviews here.

That being said, it's a rollicking ride that takes up the other side of the campaign. Listening through it, I did find a couple of places where it surprised me that Georgia and Shaun didn't mention the events from this story in Feed. However, I don't find that it threatened my suspension of disbelief as dramatically as another reviewer suggests. That reviewer was also taking issue with the parallelism between disasters with this democratic campaign and Senator Ryman's campaign. If you read with care, you will see that it actually makes perfect sense, and there is no sense that things are overly coincidental. Also some of the big disasters in the Ryman campaign barely rate a mention in this book because of what's going on with these characters. Perhaps the converse is true, and one also gets the sense that there are cover ups that would keep people in another part of the country focused on other events from even realizing the seriousness of some of what happens in Feedback.

So far as the narrator goes, I noticed a few mispronunciations, but I'm not altogether sure all of them actually are mispronunciations. She uses an Irish accent through much of the book since the viewpoint character is Irish, and people with different accents do pronounce some words dramatically differently. I don't know about the main character's name, though, not having seen what the author said about it

One of the reviewers on this title actually says outright that all the characters besides the main character sound the same. Not sure what that person listened to, but they categorically do not. It's not subtle who you're listening to. In two words I can tell which character I'm hearing. Also, another complains that the narrator draws out the main character's vowels for excessively long periods. I don't find that to be true. The narrator differentiates the voices beautifully, and the emotions are well expressed.

If you're looking for another Feed, you're going to be disappointed, because these characters are different people and react differently to events. If you're interested in a story that takes new characters, the same time period and related events and runs with them, you may very well enjoy this. It has a solid plot that flows naturally from start to finish. There are surprises, there is suspense, and there is a satisfying denouement.

1 person found this helpful

A great read, when it gets out of it's own way.

One of the largest questions I had during the course of Feed (the original) was what was going on on the Democratic side of the fence. In that book, you would have thought the entire election process was a single-party race. Feedback exists to answer that question, filling in the gaps not only on the Democratic side, but offering a view into lesser- or under-used characters from the Republican party as well. And sometimes, that's the book's greatest downfall.

As someone who's read the original trilogy obsessively, I both appreciated and was annoyed by the symmetry to the original book--the attacks on the campaign that often followed similar ideas and themes, and were timed to nearly coincide with one another. While Grant did her best to lampshade the "reasons" no one heard of these events in Feed, the rationales used are flimsy at best, dropping any suspension of disbelief right on the floor.

The book only really picked itself up to a four-star rating about mid-way through, when (mild spoilers, sorry! It's only this sentence) the cast took a hard left turn away from the politics and started making their own way into the world.

That being said, Grant completely avoided one trap that often catches authors as they expand a 'verse: new characters hero-worshiping the original cast. Instead, the new cast offer some much-needed change in perspective for the Newsflesh world.

Part of me doesn't even want to mention this next bit, but as I've seen other reviews already expressing annoyance about it, my two cents is thus: While I never would have accused Grant of being close-minded, I'd always been a little bothered by the lack of outright LGBTQIA representation in the main series (barring a nod to Maggie and Buffy) and her general lack of a lesbian/bi/other female lead in any of her works, including the McGuire titles. The delicious, and realistic, diversity of Feedback's cast is like a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways and I hope she continues to expand her horizons and the voices of her main characters.

And I have to admit, some of the featured zombie-laden traps are absolutely inspired.

As to the narration of the audio-version, however...Georgia Dolenz's lead as Ash is spot-on perfect. Every other character, however, ranged from lacking to completely indistinguishable from everyone else. And though Dolenz hits a certain stride about mid-way through the book, the beginning of the book is filled with stumbles and emotionless deliveries of side-characters lines. More often than not, this made listening to the book a chore, rather than a treat. I lost track of how many times I needed to back track a minute or more just to figure out what was going on.

That being said, it certainly wasn't the worst narration I've heard, and I can't let that detract too much from an otherwise enjoyable book. I do hope that, if there's a follow-up book with this cast (and I suspect there will be), Grant takes strides to let the cast have their own story, rather than riding on the Mason's coat tails.

5 people found this helpful

Not as good as the others in this series

It's been a while since I've read Mira Grant's work, and maybe my tastes have changed, but I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I enjoyed the other Newsflesh novels.