“Do we really want to provide a genocide with elevator music?”

27. Blackout – Mira Grant

This may be one of the first series I read where I was not into something that was a major aspect at all – in this case the characters’ blogging. However, unlike podcasting and its way more niche annoyance factor in books I’ve read more recently, the Newsflesh series is also interesting in that blogging was a major focus for informing the populous purposes. The blog serves get the word out on who is lying to everyone, how the disease is going, journalism fu as Joe Bob Briggs would say, and then in Blackout (appropriately with that title), right when they are way deeper into the CDC and actual informative places with weird motives and creepy politicians and all that kind of maelstrom of information they’d want to put out – the blog posts are being listed as “unpublished.” That kind of takes the wind out of their mission. As does Georgia being stuck in a room for a good portion. And so does the repetition that seems to plague Grant’s books. One place in a series where you can ignore that the story should also work as a standalone is the end, so why repeat structural world building information? The repeated descriptions of how KA progresses can really go away by the last book; there should be nothing but action and wrap up for the characters who are supposed to be endeared to the reader or that they want to see fall so the endearing ones succeed. I can’t say that’s how Blackout read for me.

 

Duncan sniffs for a sensible ending.