Parasite (Parasitology, #1) in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jan 03, 2020 Jaime rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, read-2019

I loved Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, but haven't ready any of her work since. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed this just as much!

Parasite is centered around Sal Mitchell, who used to be Sally until Sally had a seizure and drove into a bus. Everyone thought Sally was dead, until Sal woke up, presumably saved by the medical tapeworm living inside her. But Sal has no memory of life before the accident, and must relearn how to be a person.

In this future time, tapeworms are humanity's saviors. The specially-e I loved Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, but haven't ready any of her work since. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed this just as much!

Parasite is centered around Sal Mitchell, who used to be Sally until Sally had a seizure and drove into a bus. Everyone thought Sally was dead, until Sal woke up, presumably saved by the medical tapeworm living inside her. But Sal has no memory of life before the accident, and must relearn how to be a person.

In this future time, tapeworms are humanity's saviors. The specially-engineered parasites are tailored to solve the problems that people took pills for in the past -- allergies, mental health issues, diabetes, etc. Better living through medicine is for chumps, let your tapeworm take care of you! And the mastermind behind the tapeworms, Steven Banks and his company Symbogen, are especially interested in helping Sal adjust to her new life, and the fact that they get to study what happened to her along the way is just a bonus, right?

The problem is, people are starting to act strange, falling prey to a "sleeping" sickness that anyone in our world would recognize as "becoming a zombie". Why is it that zombie pop culture never exists in zombie books, so no one recognizes "hey, that person is becoming a zombie!"? Between Symbogen and Sal's father, a general working for USAMRIID, Sal finds herself right in the middle of the trouble.

Much like in the Newsflesh trilogy, chapters are separated by pieces of writing that give you little clues to the overall picture. In this case, it is journal entries and research notes from the creators of the tapeworms and excerpts from a very odd children's book, sometimes quotes from the characters.

I tend to skim over real sciencey stuff, but the sciencey stuff here wasn't too difficult to understand and I didn't skim much of it. I wasn't overly surprised by the reveal near the end of the book -- it's not difficult to guess the direction things are going in. I really enjoyed this and intend to jump right into the next book. ...more

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Jan 05, 2014 Cassandra Moore rated it liked it

Read more reviews @ Wickedly Delicious Tales

Parasite was one very odd book. Weird with a capital W. I finished it with mixed feelings. This is the first book in a series, and it was largely focused on Sal Mitchell. She is a young woman who wakes up after being brain dead due to a car accident with no memory of who she is thanks to her SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard. The Intestinal Bodyguard is a modified tapeworm designed to secrete drugs and boost your immune system. Things begin to get weird af Read more reviews @ Wickedly Delicious Tales

Parasite was one very odd book. Weird with a capital W. I finished it with mixed feelings. This is the first book in a series, and it was largely focused on Sal Mitchell. She is a young woman who wakes up after being brain dead due to a car accident with no memory of who she is thanks to her SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard. The Intestinal Bodyguard is a modified tapeworm designed to secrete drugs and boost your immune system. Things begin to get weird after people start falling to the sleeping sickness. They just stop walking and go slack jawed before coming back with empty eyes and increasingly violent behavior. As Sal gets pulled further into the conspiracy surrounding the SymboGen implants, she begins questioning everything she's been told.

The premise is very promising, tapeworms meant to help your health want to take over. I was hooked early in the book, but somewhere around the middle of the book, I started to get a little bored with it. Grant spent a lot of time building up anticipation for several anticlimactic revelations of something you already knew based on the book description or guessed by all of the hints and foreshadowing. There's some science babble for a few chapters, then it kind of gets interesting again near the last quarter or so of the novel. The big reveal at the end is again very anticlimactic. I feel like most people who read the book will already have caught on or at least had a suspicion about it. Sal was a little annoying through most of the book. She wanted to ask questions, but it seems like she doesn't really want the answers. She acts very much like a sheltered child who stomps her feet when she doesn't get her way. She is in some ways only 6 years old, but it's irritating as a reader to have moments when she seems very bright and moments when you just want to smack her for being so simple minded. She also has times when she acts like a child who needs to be handled gently and protected, and then she wants independence and to fight back.

Nathan is a strong support character for Sal, except for perhaps his tendency to coddle her. It will be interesting to see how his role develops in the next book. I don't want to give away too much, but Sal's dad, Dr. Banks, and another doctor introduced in the middle will make for some interesting antagonists in the next book. None are all good or all evil, but they each have their own agenda. I'm curious to see how that element might play out.

Overall, the book hit in the middle for me. Parts were fascinating and parts left me bored, but I am intrigued enough to read the next book when it comes out. ...more

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Dec 15, 2013 taeli rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, library-book, netgalley

finished 1/24/14

Mira Grant's new series set in the near(ish) future of 2027, where nearly everyone has willingly accepted a tapeworm parasite which has been modified to keep people healthy, administer their medications, and generally protect them. Six years ago, Sally Mitchell had a car accident that left her brain dead and in a coma. Just before her family has to decide whether to take her off life support, her SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard allows her to wake up. Unfortunately, she doesn't know ...more

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Jun 24, 2013 Lydia Presley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, scifi, favorites, 2013

Oh my goodness. Mira Grant is so fantastic people and this book did not disappoint at all (which reminds me that I need to go back and re-read the Newsflash trilogy and get reviews up!). When I got approved for Parasite I could not hold back my excitement and immediately downloaded it. This broke my rule of no reading until a month before release... which means this full review will not be released for a few months! Ahhh!

But don't worry, you can go and read it on my blog at The Lost Entwife
...more

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