My brother and his wife were kind enough to bestow upon me the gift of undeath on the occasion of the anniversary of my birth. Mira Grant’s Deadline
is the latest book in the Newsflesh trilogy and it delivered. I was concerned that the loss of (SPOILER) Georgia in Book 1 would kill momentum; but Grant figured out an even better way to retain her pocket narrator, while at the same time giving us the continuing story from Shaun’s point of view. In classic Second Book in the Trilogy fashion, things aren’t wrapped up neatly (or at all); in fact I arrived at what felt like the resolution of the Book 2 plot only to realize I had approximately 100 pages of narrative left. Things…don’t get better. Oh, and make sure you read the teaser chapter at the end of the book for one of the best sucker-punch bombshells I’ve seen delivered in a long time.
Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline is a very different animal. It makes no bones about the origins of its dystopia. You can almost hear Cline posit at the beginning of each chapter: “I like [insert 80s popular culture reference here]. Can I make a chapter out of that?” You would think this would grow tiresome; in fact there have been several chapters so far that have made my inner nerd cringe a bit at the sheer depth and breadth of geekery on display. BUT. I keep reading. In fact I kept reading last night until my book light burnt out. Ready Player One is a big, fat, Doritos-infused love letter to geek culture. While the premise is just barely this side of plausible (and in parts reminiscent of Dan Simmon’s Flashback
), if you’re a pop-culture addict like myself, and you still remember when Pac-Man wasn’t “cute” but “cool,” then you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Anthony Karcz
So the end (or incredible lack thereof) didn’t bug the heck out of you with Deadline? I was in the same spot, about 100 pages left, thinking “umm…. this book is done, where’s she going?” I got about 20 more pages before I realized “oh, she’s going NOWHERE. This was a 600 page book of nothing.”
It’s a second book in a trilogy, so it didn’t bother me terribly. Too many authors try to make their second books self-contained, when really they’re just extended lead-ins for the good stuff in the third book. At least she didn’t try to make it something it shouldn’t be.
But yet you hated The Strain for the same reason? That was the first book in the trilogy, with a self contained story, that was opened up in the last 40 pages. What’s the dif? I dunno, Deadline just annoyed me toward the end. I held hope that there was some story in there – and there really wasnt. It was just placing characters in various points and get them to do stuff. Feed had a good narrative and Deadline just didn’t. That was exasperated with the last 100 pages when she said “fuck it, I’m not even going to pretend there’s a story here.”
But the characters were engaging and you could actually see that the story she’s leading up to had roots in the previous narrative. As opposed to The Strain’s generic leading man and deus ex machina ending (HAI SUPER SEEKRIT SOCIETY!).
I’ll agree, there are similarities in structure there, with similar pacing issues; but at the end of the day, I’ll more readily forgive if you give me characters that I love and solid writing. Grant has it. Del Torro (and his ghost writers) don’t.