I'm considering my rating for this final book in the trilogy - which of course I had to read, even though I was a bit ambivilent about Deadline. Where Feed (by far my favourite and most well crafted of the series) was narrated by Georgia, and Deadline by (a really annoying) Sean, in Blackout Georgia and Sean exchange chapters of narration, doing their too-witty-to-live thing which is one of McGuire/Grant's favourite character quirks. Everyone in Blackout seems to spend most of their time in witty banter.

Sean's narration in Deadline irritated me, and was slightly better in Blackout - at least he's stopped narrating every sip of coke he takes. But he's still going on and on and on about the fact that he hears and sees Georgia, and has made the decision to "go crazy". This is never really resolved - even though it's acknowledged that at a certain point in the story there's no need for him to be crazy anymore, it's not very clear how he stops. It's all a bit convenient.

(view spoiler)[The sexual relationship between Sean and Georgia hinted at in Deadline is explicitly revealed here, with Georgia describing it as the one thing neither of them could write about (as an explanation, presumably, as to why it wasn't revealed in their first person narration before). I thought it was a bit of a cop out as an explanation - you don't get the sense that their narratives are something they're writing down, you're just in their heads. So I don't see why their internal narrative would conceal something from the reader - and they're not unreliable narrators in other respects. But whatever - they have an incestuous relationship (and yes, I consider a sexual relationship between children raised as siblings to be incestuous) and they live incestuously happily ever after in the end. (hide spoiler)]

While Blackout is very readable and exciting and easy to race through, it's not without quite a few flaws (pointless action sequences that pad out the length, a fairly unbelievable conspiracy theory - which relies on our protagonist bloggers being, like, totally indispensibly awesome journalists, which - heh). So, only three stars despite the fact that I enjoyed it a lot.