Hugo 2013 Reviews: Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout is another of the Hugo nominated novels that is one book in an ongoing series -- this time, the culminating novel of the Newsflesh trilogy, one of my favorite settings since I read Feed as a nominated  story a couple years ago.

Like the other two, the use of blog updates (published and private) add good texture and additional viewpoints to what is happening in the story.  Having tried blogging myself (this is my third? fourth? attempt at blogging), I do have a bit of difficulty in suspending my disbelief that everybody seems to blog -- from the vice president to random scientists, not just those making their living from it.  That aside, though, the world continues to be richly detailed and this book exposes even more natural consequences and developments in the world it has created as events continue.

In Feed, the story was first-person POV until [redacted for spoiler], at which point another first-person POV took over (not counting the alternate viewpoints shown in the various blog entries).  In Deadline, that POV was continued (to the best of my knowledge, and I haven't double-checked), except for one twist at the end.  In Blackout, the story alternates first-person POVs between the two POVs from the first two books.  This could be confusing, and indeed it was a bit difficult for me to get used to at first, but the strict alternation of viewpoint chapters helps keep everything sorted out, as well as the fact that the two storylines are unrelated for the majority of the novel.  This also allows more tension to be introduced as, when the storylines were drawing together, one POV would show actions that would unknowingly affect the other POV, and vice-versa.

I would generally classify the novels as horror, and though I don't usually claim to read horror, some of the recent items I've read in the genre have been pretty good, and not at all what I would expect.  That said, there is still a quotient of horror that must be had, a minimum level, as it were, and in a book and trilogy dealing so closely with the zombie uprising, it almost had to end with a fight against hordes of zombies, and with some characters dying.  It seems a necessity of the genre to do so, and although I have no objections to how the novel ended, to me the need to include those elements made the ending less memorable, rather than more.  The reveals were great, but rather than face down the (face of the) smart enemy, the good guys had to face mindless zombie hordes instead.

Still, a smart book and a good end to a well-done trilogy.

My current ranking:

1) Redshirts

2) Blackout

3) Captain Vorpatril

4) Crescent Moon