Definitely read this one on audiobook. The narrator makes the character's Irish accent stand out so well. ( )

I love, really love, the Newsflesh series. Feedback is a good, albeit slightly familiar, entry. It isn't a precisely a rehash of [b: Feed|169756|Feed|M.T. Anderson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327891005s/169756.jpg|163928] but there is a lot of structural and character similarity to it. And to the Parasitology series. I loved meeting a new crew and seeing the election events of Feed from another perspective, but where the story is different in the details, the general arc is basically identical to Feed.

I was so amazed and happy to see such a wide range of characters (seriously, an Irish lesbian, a bisexual Chinese lady, a straight Black man, and a genderfluid makeup-loving, transmission-fixing tech guru are the main team). It never felt to me like a Diversity Checklist™ because that sounds basically like my own friend group. There were a couple of moments that felt a little sexual-and-gender-identity-101, but that's like .01% of the whole book.

For anyone who thought Feed was heavy on the politics and light on the zombies, this is very firmly zombie fiction, with election politics and global conspiracy for flavor. This could technically be read as a stand-alone, but it spoils the end of Feed in a pretty huge way. ( )

Great companion novel

This one introduces more background and world building for the Newsflesh universe, through the eyes a refreshingly new group of people unrelated to After the End Times. I wouldn't start here if you're new to Newsflesh - go for FEED instead. ( )

Update May 2020- yes. This is still my favorite book of the series, but it is best read after Feed at least, maybe after all three of the "main" books.


I'd have to go back and re-read (again) to be sure, but I may like this "co-quel" even more than Feed. It certainly can't replace Feed, because it doesn't have the world-building that was in the first one. But I loved the alternate perspective and the way the characters perceived the Mason siblings. I also loved how they stories didn't quite parallel one another and each group discovered things at different paces.

It expands the world from [bad organization] vs. one small group of bloggers so we can see that the [bad organization] is actually fighting exposure on many different fronts.

I'm hoping to hear more from this team. Thank you! ( )

This one left me loving/hating Mira Grant's work just as much as the other entries in this incredible series. Loving, because Grant is an incredible writer who puts an amazing amount of thought into building real, complex characters and then putting them in interesting, dangerous situations to see how they get out of them. Hating, because not everyone makes it to the end alive. (I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as a spoiler given the book is full of zombies who want to eat people.)

Oh, did I mention the main cast of this book is 75% queer? Because that part is amazing as far as I'm concerned. This is the first book I've read that not only references a nonbinary character in the first 20 pages, but goes on to specifically, unequivocally and unapologetically make sure everyone knows damn well that they are genderfluid and not going to take anyone's crap about it. To add to the awesomeness, the main character is a lesbian, her girlfriend is bi, and her husband (read the book, you'll understand) is black. I'm just not used to that concentration of diversity in a book. Mira has well and truly raised the bar for queer rep in media, and done so amazingly well.

While you technically *could* read Feedback before the rest of the Newsflesh books, I wouldn't recommend it. Seeing the events of the main trilogy through another, distant set of eyes brings something special to the series as a whole. There's also a fairly major plot point from [b:Deadline|8429687|Deadline (Newsflesh Trilogy, #2)|Mira Grant|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408500444l/8429687._SY75_.jpg|13292985] casually dished out. ( )