Feed

I really wanted to enjoy this novel. I'm a big fan of zombie films in general (especially anything out of Italy in the 70's / 80's) and I loved the premise of this book.

The idea behind how the virus was created and is spread is very clever and the world post-Rising is vividly described. This is the key stregth of the novel. However, I found there were some real problems with characterisation that prevented me from really enjoying the book.

Maybe I'm not the target audience or perhaps it's a cultural thing but I could really not relate to the central characters. Within a few pages I was hoping they'd be killed by zombies, mostly because they seemed a little stupid. Furthermore, I found the dialogue between the brother and sister blogges to be particularly annoying - maybe I just didn't engage with them.

As the book continued I found myself not just disliking the characters but becoming bored by them. They seemed especially one dimensional and just a little to perfect. Even the flaky character is a genius in one field and 'perfectly flaky' in another. The politicians were especially one dimensional, the central senator was almost to perfect to believe and I was disapointed to see he was still rather to perfect, even at the end. The characters are very stereotypical (danger addicted brother, dedicated newshound, perfect politician wife). Even the security teams were as expected.

The action scenes were decent and the novel paced well but my overwhelming sense of not caring what happened to the characters prevented any suspense.

The plot was obvious throughout and really would have benefitted from a few surprises - it was all very linear, not enough political intrigue and perhaps not enough zombie mayhem. There is a great book or film in here somewhere - maybe the sequels are better.

Where the author succeeds is by giving the reader many ideas to consider without ever preaching. For me it was thought provoking to consider the nature of meat eating in society, gun control, animal rights, terrorism and the all to true (in my opinion) that the fear of fear is worse than the actuality. Some of the issues may be more relevant to an American audience and perhaps it does work better as YA fiction.