Aphelion Issue 298, Volume 28
September 2024
 
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Off the Shelf

Deadline by Mira Grant

by Larissa March


In Mira Grant’s first book, Feed, the Masons and their team of bloggers at The End Times paid a crippling cost to make sure the world was told the truth when the presidential campaign they were covering got much, much hotter than anyone could have expected. Consequently, a CDC researcher who has faked her own death to escape a deadly conspiracy in the CDC itself comes to them with the harrowing story of a lifetime.  Unfortunately, it really is the story of a lifetime – possibly a very, very short one for everyone who knows about it, and the living are far more dangerous than the walking dead. 

Mira’s world of zombies, politicians, medical researchers and bloggers is fleshed out vividly and in detail. Cancer and the common cold have both been finally cured by engineered viruses – with the unfortunate side effect of a mutation combining the two into Kellis-Amberlee, which triggered the Rising. Twenty years later, zombies are a fact of life that’s just not going away, and society has inevitably changed. As the first people to spread accurate information during the Rising, bloggers have become the most trusted source of news, but people in power are still willing to do anything to keep their secrets.

Deadline is the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy, and in the nature of all good sequels, the stakes are higher, the betrayals are nastier, and the twists are sharper.  The ending has not one but two cliff hangers which will take a truly mind blowing book to properly resolve – fortunately, Mira seems to be up to the challenge!

Mira Grant's homepage is miragrant.com

Purchase Deadline from Powells Bookstore or your favourite book retailer.


© 2011 Larissa March

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