Since you never know when an outbreak can occur, people don't like to gather in groups, public places, and anywhere else there could be a lot of people. This means that everyone will have to rely on the news to get any information about the outside world. Well, of course, the mainstream journalists are going to report the party line, so the only real source of information is from bloggers. Blogging has become a valid line of work, and also a very dangerous one! Georgia (always called George) and Shaun Mason have been raised from birth to be in front of a camera. Their parents only adopted them after their biological son was killed, to bring their own ratings up. Shaun never really cared what he was doing, but George was determined to be the best Newsie ever. There are several types of bloggers: Irwins who live for the dangerous work of "poking zombies with a stick," Newsies who follow the pure and unaltered truth, and Fictionals who enjoy living in a world of fiction. Shaun loves being the Irwin and poking at any zombie that he can with George in tow to record the news. Their third member, Georgette Meissonier (always called Buffy), is the Fictional and their master computer tech. She is amazing with computers and security systems, which is very important in a world where everything is digital. This trio leads a group of a few more bloggers called After the End Times. The trio is about to be picked up for the best news story of their lives!
As you can imagine, in this world a presidential campaign is very different from today. Almost no one is going to go listen to a live speech. Senator Peter Wyman is running for president and unlike any candidate before him, he wants to take a team of bloggers on the campaign trail with him. He will give them full access to anything they want to know about him and his politics. As you can imagine, this is the job of a lifetime. It has the potential to take a small blogging outfit and bump it into the big times. Every blogging crew out there applies and After the End Times is chosen. Unfortunately, this campaign trail is full of deadly dangers that even they couldn't have forseen, other than just the zombies!
I have to tell you that I read Feed a bit over 6 months ago and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. It is probably the best novel that I've read in years and I read more than a book a week. The real genius of the novel is that yes, it is a horror novel, but the horror is not because of the zombies. The real horror is found in the human beings that are left in the world and their actions upon each other. You might wonder why I'm writing a review 6 months late. Well, the story doesn't end with Feed. It is just the first part of a trilogy and the second book, Deadline, has just been released. Stay tuned for my review of it in a few days!
