We had a pretty good discussion in this thread about Mira Grant’s Feed and with the sequel, Deadline, now available I thought it would be fun to talk about it.
I’ll put my thoughts in a new post so SPOILER WARNING from this point foward.
Just like I feared, Deadline doesn’t work as well as Feed because Shaun isn’t half the character that Georgia was. He’s a whiny, childish little bastard who seems to relish the fact that he’s a psychopath with a tempo. Making him a psychopath with a temper who also hallucinates his dead sister was just too much.
But I have to admit, I did enjoy it once the action got going. The drive out of Oakland and the scenes at Maggie’s house in Weed were pretty well done. But the seams of Grant’s world are starting to show and giving more detail to the structure of the virus makes the whole thing harder to believe. And the constant blood tests and washing in bleach to protect against a virus that can only be transmitted by blood splatter or a bite is ridiculous.
I was also expecting the final twist pretty much from the moment I picked up the book.
Finally, I have to specifically make mention of the (adopted) brother-sister incest that was confirmed in Deadline. It was hinted at in Feed and a lot of reviewers shrugged it off as just siblings who are really close. A few even said that’s how close they were to their own sibling. But finding out that Georgia and Shaun were doing it all throughout Feed and had been since they were teenagers was just a big OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE IT moment for me.
I’ll finish the series, but Deadline is a big step down from Feed.