This prequel to the Newsflesh trilogy is the ultimate celebration of fannish culture, a tale about geeks stranded in a zombie outbreak in the middle of the San Diego ComicCon. Unlike the earlier novella Countdown, this one has a self-contained plot that does not require any knowledge about the trilogy to be enjoyed, and, therefore, could probably serve as a good gateway to it, the means to gauge if you like Grant's style enough to commit to reading the whole trilogy.

It must be hard to elicit sympathy for and build up suspense around the characters that are set up from the very beginning as not having made it (almost as hard as pulling off that 1st-person POV trick Mira Grant did in the finale of Feed, if not more so). And yet, here I am, long past my bedtime, bawling my eyes out. Part of it is the natural sympathy for geeks, sure :) But also, it's the fact that zombies are an obvious metaphor for death, and these characters, when forcibly confronted with the fact of their mortality, decide to revel in the joy, and grace, and courage of life. That really got to me.