… and I don’t really want to talk about the book, I want to talk about the way the ending made me feel.  Warning: unedited rambling ahead, with footnotes because I’m in that kind of mood.

I’m a pretty canny reader.  Once I know a genre, once I know where somebody is going, I can usually feel the cant of the piece.  I can tell you where it’s going, and even if I don’t know the landmarks I know the territory, if you catch me.  It makes things a little easier for someone like me, who has tremendous emotional bleed potential – I have empathy in spades, and when I see or hear or read about someone miserable, chances are I’m crying.  This also works with anger and frustration and joy and, most painfully of all, embarrassment.* 

I’m not saying that once I know where something’s going, I don’t cry or laugh, but I don’t cry or laugh as hard.  It’s one of the reasons I’m still okay reading dangerous-to-me books – I feel sad but not devastated, angry but not wrathful, that kind of thing.**  

I’m used to books where I can read the telegraphing and the foreshadowing.  I want to be clear: this isn’t to say that these books are simple or predictable, just that I get a page or two to breathe before the tears flow.  I’m safe to read'em in public.

All that being said: it’s a really damned good thing I read Deadline at home.

For those of you who’ve read Feed but not Deadline***, you know what I mean when I say that the last fifty pages of that book were me in absolute tears, in an absolute snotty mess, sobbing and mourning for someone who I loved dearly, and if you didn’t feel the same way you have no soul.

And Deadline had that same moment.  Deadline had a reveal, a scene, where rage and grief and horror took me.

The difference was, that moment was in the middle of the book.

Right smack in the middle.  Right where I didn’t expect it.  Right in a way that ran contrary to every other book that I’d read in this genre.  It hits the narrator of Deadline with such a visceral smack that he leaves the building.  It hit me with such a visceral smack that I threw the book away and burst into tears****.

It took me over an hour of pacing my apartment, distracting myself and cooling myself down before I could pick up the book again.

After that, things went a bit back to normal.  Half the ending, I managed to feel my way through as usual.  Half of it I saw, and I was ready for.  I was more cautious, after that first kick to the teeth, pouring over words and science***** and quotes and writing to make sure I didn’t get that kind of emotional bludgeon again.  So the ending didn’t make my heart race in the same way.  I knew what was going to be okay and what wasn’t… that is, until I didn’t.

I’ve since re-read the book.  Everything about the ending is telegraphed.  Every hint is there; every nudge and note.  There is no deux ex machina.  But holy fuck,  I did not see that coming.  I spent most of the last twenty pages saying omg in a way that meant wtf, re-reading sentences to make sure I’d actually read that.

And if it’s not enough that there’s zombies and real!science and snarky characters and brilliant dialogue and bloggers and political intrigue and well-written action sequences and mad scientists and cephalopods and tiny dogs and brilliant character development and some interesting commentary on mental health issues in these books, well, all of the above should make it clear that these books have my absolute and unhesitating recommendation.

Read.  Them.

Feed and Deadline, by Mira Grant.  Five out of five machetes.

—

* Which is probably why I can’t watch a lot of popular ‘comedies’, where the point is humiliation of the key characters, one way or another.

** There are exceptions, but I can count them on one hand and they all involve non-fiction.

*** Note to those who liked Feed but haven’t read Deadline: what is wrong with you?  GET.THIS.BOOK.

**** Scared the ever living hell out of my cat, too.  Sorry, Frank.

***** So.  Much.  SCIENCE. in these books.