AUTHOR: Mira Grant
STARTED: June 11, 2012
FINISHED: June 25, 2012
PAGES: 672
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: My story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man - in this case, my adoptive brother and best friend, Shaun - holding a gun to the base of my skull as the virus in my blood betrayed me, transforming me from a thinking human being into something better suited to a horror move.
SUMMARY: [From Barnes and Noble] The year was 2014. The year we
cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead
started to walk. The year of the Rising.
The year was 2039. The world
didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun
Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered
the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the
truth, sacrifices have to be made.
Now, the year is 2041, and the
investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much
bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much
time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must
face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if
there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this: Things can always get worse.
THOUGHTS: What a let down. I was incredibly excited for the conclusion of this series and this book did not do it. I inclined to think that the author set herself up to fail. The first two books were sooooo good that this one, unless it was mind-blowingly awesome, was going to seem "meh" in comparsion. I would have liked "meh," instead I got "why." There is no reason for this book to exist.
The author backed herself into a corner at the end of book 2, and spent the entriety of this book trying to explain herself. There are long stretches of not action, punctuated by flurried activity. That worked in the previous books, but here it feel drawn out for the purposes of increasing the page count. Grant seemed to have a lot of ideas, characters, and plot points floating around in her head. Instead of editing them down to the good stuff, they were all forced in - whether or not they made sense to the overarching storyline.
And, to make matters worse, the "big secrets" were so dull. The first I saw coming since the first book... the second, the zombie related one that was supposed to mean everythign, was so convoluted that I didn't care. It was supposed to answer all our questions; instead, I was glad the book was over.
The only things that keep this book from being a complete bust are the snark and secondary characters. Those bits were still readable. Everything else was blah.
RATING: 4/10 [An "Okay" Book]
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