Blackout, by Mira Grant

This is the last of Ms. Grant's trilogy; I read it almost immediately after finishing the second volume, and between both books I've neglected both chores and sleep.  It was worth it.

Unfortunately there is very little I can say about this novel that won't be a spoiler.  It is a certainty that if you've read the first two volumes, you'll want to read this one.   I'll say this much:  the ending is good.

Blackout (The Newsflesh Trilogy)

Deadline (The Newsflesh Trilogy), by Mira Grant

In this sequel to "Feed," Ms. Grant has done two unusual things:  she made a second volume nearly as good as the first, and she changed the voice of the novel from (mostly) Georgia to (mostly) her brother Shaun - and pulled off the difference in tone brilliantly.

To get you up to speed, "Feed"was a post apocalyptic zombie novel that had people going about their lives just fine, albeit with some modifications to keep the nasty creatures at bay.  But there were cities and highways and jobs.  I point this out just to differentiate it from the scorched earth school of zombie books.   And it was less about zombies than it was a book with zombies in it.   Our narrator was Georgina, a journalist who worked with her brother Shaun.

In this sequel Shaun takes over as narrator as the story continues to look at why after so many years of well funded government -run research, zombie outbreaks have not abated.   This is a bit more of a zombie book than its predecessor, but it is more a story about people and how they address their situation.

I recommend it, and look forward to reading volume three.

Deadline (The Newsflesh Trilogy)

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, by Joe Bageant

This book, in spite of its odd title, should be required reading.  For liberals, so they can better appreciate how the typical working class conservative voter came to his or her perspective.  And to recognize why the average American thinks they're daft.  For conservatives, especially those in the working class, so that they can understand how it is that they are manipulated to reliably vote against their own self interest.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War

Up with Lo, by Roman Hellwigi

This is a rather odd book; the main character, Lo, is the devil on earth.   Living mostly in New York, he seems to get along well, wrapping his tail around his leg beneath his suit trousers and managing to fit his hooves into normal men's shoes.   So you mostly forget about his immortality, or notice that he's not actually doing any evil deeds so much as hanging out like any other extremely wealthy New Yorker who happens to remember the past thousand years fairly well, and before that only occasionally.

As a trilogy, there are two more books to read.  I liked this one well enough, but I'm not sure if I'll bother to read the sequel.

Up with Lo (The Lo Trilogy (Book I))

The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker

This is a wonderful novel, certainly a candidate for my 2014 list of the "best books I've read" this year.

The story takes place in 1899.  The golem is named Chava; she was created by a dangerous rabbi who practiced Kabbalistic magic for a client who was traveling from Europe to New York.  Meanwhile, a jinni, captured by a wizard and trapped in a flask for a thousand years, also ends up in New York.   The two meet, and drama ensues.

The character development, plot, well everything about this novel is simply outstanding.

The Golem and the Jinni

Feed, by Mira Grant

There are a lot of novels about a post apocalyptic world filled with zombies.  This is the best one I've read.

The concept is this:  many years after the appearance of zombies, the world has adapted to the dangers they present, and folks just deal with it; life goes on.   Meanwhile, mainstream journalism is recognized for being slanted and tainted by propaganda (which, by the way, it already is in our non-fiction real world, thanks to folks like Rupert Murdoch and probably his equivalents on the other side of the aisle). So bloggers have become mainstream reporters.

The novel follows the siblings Georgina and Shaun as they join a presidential campaign as fully accredited press, and the things they learn.  It isn't even really a "zombie book" so much as a great novel that happens to take place in a world with zombies.

Highly recommended, and I'm eager to read the sequel .

Feed (The Newsflesh Trilogy)

Girl Jacked, by Christopher Greyson

I made it all the way to 37% of this mystery novel before giving up.   It wasn't that it was horrible so much as it was uninteresting; both the story line and the character development.  This novel is tedious.

The concept is sound:  Jack, our hero and a policeman, looks for a missing girl - the sister of his best friend from high school.   Jack is completely unlikeable: his is borderline incompetent and drinks to excess.

Girl Jacked (A Jack Stratton Mystery)

Wolfkind, by Stephen Melling

This should have been a good novel:  an assassin is at large, and our hero will infiltrate a crime syndicate to find and eliminate the bad guy.   I made it 10% of the way through before stopping; this book is unreadable.

Why is that?  The writing is just too difficult to get through.   Here are some samples:

"Familiar resentment of her father seeped into her thinking and reawakened feelings she had tried so hard to repress."

"Sinking into his seat, Joshua gazed into the depths of his beer glass.  Tiny bubbles floated through the golden liquid to the surface, bobbed there a few seconds, then popped.  Many of his inhibitions seemed to pop along with them, become gas and air.  Tormented by the desire to tell his secret, Joshua gazed fixedly at the old man."

"He tossed the scrapbook aside and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. A spider's web of cracks radiated from the light fitting. For the first time in his life the ceiling above him was not his own. This unsettled him in a way he found hard to define. Intensified his feeling of alienation. He rolled onto his side and stared at the wall, thinking about the handgun and poisoned load at the bottom of his bag. Before long, his eyelids grew heavy and he fell asleep."

And so did I.

Wolfkind

The Storm Protocol, by Iain Cosgrove

This is a poorly written novel.   My chief complaint is that the book is set primarily in the USA.   But the author is clearly, obviously not American.   As a result, it is full of dialogue, spelling and jargon that one would never see in the USA.  Which, when put in the mouths of American characters, simply doesn't work.

I made it 37% of the way through this book (according to my Kindle ) before declaring it to be unreadable.

The Storm Protocol

Slow Burn Infected, by Bobby Adair

After finishing the first of Mr. Adair's series, I decided to go for more.  I was on vacation, and it could have been the margaritas making the decision for me.  But here I am.

This novel continues the story of Zed, the "slow burn" zombie who hasn't (yet) lost his human behavior.   Zed and his associates continue to stumble around the Austin, Texas area, dealing with a variety of unpleasant problems.

At the end of this volume I was fatigued with the whole thing.   Zed isn't a particularly likable hero, and it started getting boring.  So I'm not going to bother with volume three ; dedicated zombie genre fans may have more energy than me.

Slow Burn: Infected, Book 2