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I’ve recommended James Dashner’s 2009 novel The Maze Runner to a number of tweens and teens who have enjoyed it. I’m glad they kids are loving it because I did not. You can read the reasons in the review I wrote for a grad school class in YA literature.

The flaws in The Maze Runner kept me from picking up the second book. Recently, I was thinking, maybe I’ll give the series a second chance when I came across Pink Me‘s review of The Maze Runner.

http://pinkme.typepad.com/pink-me/2011/10/the-maze-runner-by-james-dashner-review.html#more

Pink Me pointed out that exposition was dribbled throughout the story, slowing the action. I think she nailed why I felt so disconnected from the protagonist Thomas. She also indicated that it was bad SF but didn’t detail her Flying Snowman moment (the point when she stopped believing the premise) for the book.

I wish she had. It would have been interesting to compare notes. I had a lot of moments when my disbelief failed to suspend. The killer was the sunspot rational for the zombies and scorched earth — very, very bad science that any fifth-grader with a search engine could figure out.

I’m also still annoyed that Dashner’s only female character was cross between a damsel in distress and a magical negro. Nothing says “Girls keep out of the boys clubhouse” like drugging the only female character so comatose throughout most of the book. The Maze Runner definitely fails The Bechdel Test.

Elections and zombies

Mira Grant’s FEED packs the punch of a shotgun.

Reading Mira Grant’s “FEED” during the last week of the presidential election was fabulous. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel about Georgia and Shaun Mason, a pair of sister and brother bloggers covering a presidential election 20 years after two viruses created zombies.

Grant writes journalists with the same raw reality and stark impact as an Edward R. Murrow broadcast during The Blitz of London. She captures the intensity of lives focused on pursuit of truth and she drops her readers into the thick of the deadline adrenaline addiction. In the fictional post-Uprising, journalists in the field are in a war zone, a war against highly contagious viruses.(The Masons’ checklists  reads something like: hidden camera, recorder, live feed, notebook, body armor, trusty .40-caliber, extra amo and if your Shaun, a hockey stick to poke the dead with.) I want to drink cokes with the Masons and compare deadline war stories

Grant’s also pretty damn good with the action thriller plot and balancing an ensemble of characters and making them people you care about. One scene when a key character might be infected reminded me of the suspense of the scene in John W. Campbell’s classic novella Who Goes There? (For geeks, it’s the scene when the researchers are testing to see who is the alien. Check out John Carpenter’s 1982 adaptation “The Thing.”)

Unlike Who Goes There? the surprise in FEED wasn’t the reveal of the villain but the price that had to be paid to unmask him. I’ll just say this: Brutal. Loved it.

I generally don’t seek out zombie movies or books. However, I’ve been enjoying watching Grant/AKA Seanan McGuire’s Toby Daye urban fantasy series evolve into an incredibly twisted police procedural with the fae, politics, and other delightfully nastiness. I also a ton of good laughs with the first in her InCryptid urban fantasy series (all the fun of a grade-B man in rubber suit monster movie including creepy lizardmen and a freaky religious cult with ballroom dancing, what’s not to enjoy.) So I decided to give FEED a read.

I’m wishing I could get the chapters of Deadline on RSS. Since I can’t, I’ve now put the next two books in the NewsFlesh series, Deadline and Blackout, on hold at my library. I’m fourth and sixth in line.

A caution, FEED may not be to everyone’s taste. If you like brutal choices — like George RR Martin Game of Thrones, etc. choices — you’ll like this.

I have no clue if Grant/McGuire ever served time as one of the ink-stained or pixel-stained, but with three series (InCryptid) at a time, she must write as fast as a journalist with an editor shouting and cussing for copy 15 minutes ago.