Last book finished: Rise by Mira Grant. I’ve already squeed a fair bit about this, but it’s worth squeeing again. The Newsflesh books are great–fun, intelligent books about the post-zombie apocalypse rather than the actual zombie apocalypse. Rise is a collection of short stories set in that world, and they’re terrific gap-fillers. The stories set during the Rising are amazing–heart-wrenching and real, in a way I didn’t expect because they’re about ordinary people rather than the superheroes. Or about ordinary people and the way they become heroes. Grant examines the mythology of a hero in most of these stories, which is fascinating to me.
Many of the other stories examine the recovery process and the ways having zombies as a constant threat changes society. The story that breaks my heart every time is “The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell”, because it’s about schools, and somehow, that cuts even deeper than the story of the final San Diego Comic Con. It’s not a story for the fainthearted, and you won’t be able to sleep easily after reading it, but it’s important for too many reasons to count. Reading all those stories in one swoop, instead of bit by bit as they were released, made the breadth of what Grant has done really stand out.
There are two never-published-before stories in this collection, too, and they’re both terrific. Oddly, it was the story about the elder Masons that caught me the most. I expected it to be the story about Georgie and Shaun, the protagonists from the original trilogy, which really got me, but no. It was Michael and Stacy Mason, recovering from everything they’d had to do to survive Berkley during the Rising. They’d been characters I actively disliked in the original books and although this story doesn’t make them nicer, better people, it makes me understand them and feel sympathy for them. That’s an impressive feat and may be why I took more out of “All The Pretty Little Horses” than I did from “Coming to You Live”. Not that Georgia and Shaun’s story was bad or weak–far from it–but I didn’t feel I learned anything new about them, while I did with Michael and Stacy Mason.
This is definitely a book where you need to read the original trilogy first, but I highly recommend it, which means you probably need to get onto the Newsflesh books if you haven’t already.
Current read: Still working on Russian History: A Very Short Introduction. This will always be my status. I’m setting myself a deadline: must finish it before I go to England next month. Argh, only a week to go!
I’m in kind of a fluffy phase right now, and simultaneously reading two books by the same author: Class and Sweetshop of Dreams by Jenny Colgan. Hugely enjoying both of them.
And like the rest of the world, I’m also clued to The Cursed Child, which I was lucky enough to score from the library on release day. I’m going to need my own copy…
Next read: I have Imprudence by Gail Carriger sitting on my coffee table. As soon as my current library read is done, it’s mine!
What are you reading this week, and would you recommend it?