Well, that’s it for Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy, one of the more innovative zombie stories that I’ve come across lately. On the one hand, I’m glad to see authors ending series before they drag on into irrelevance. On the other, I would have liked to see more of the world Grant created. Oh well.
Blackout is told in alternating chapters by Shawn Mason and a cloned copy of his sister, Georgia Mason. (This isn’t really a spoiler, since Georgia II figures out what she is in her first chapter.) Blackout reads more like a continuation of the second book in the series, Deadline. It will be impossible for new readers to get into this book without having read the first two. But then, why would you want to? Anyway, Shawn and Georgia II are investigating the same vast government conspiracy from two different angles. Shawn is on the outside, on the run, trying to figure out how to keep his crew alive and reveal the truth about the CDC’s attempts to rule people through their fear of the zombie virus. Meanwhile, Georgia II is trapped inside a CDC facility. She can’t let her journalistic skills rest either and starts to uncover another one of the CDC’s dirty secrets: cloning.
I have to say that the best book in the series is the very first one, Feed. It was fantastic. The second book was still pretty good. I think Blackout is the weakest of the three because of some of the choices that Grant makes. Two of these choices in particular make it hard to call this book a completely satisfactory end to the series. The first is a revelation about Shawn and Georgia’s relationship. It came completely out of left field for me and didn’t and anything to the story. Rather, it subtracted from the story for me. The second thing that bugged me was how long it took for Shawn and Georgia II to meet up. The real action takes place after they join forces and, unfortunately, this only accounts for about the last third of the book.
I would still recommend this series for zombie fans. It’s fresh. It’s different. And there’s the delightful bonus of snarky dialog.