Countdown-Mira Grant

Where the end of the world began. Total bummer.

“The year is 2014, the year everything changed. We cured cancer. We cured the common cold. We died.
This is the story of how we rose.
When will you rise?”

While reading this novella, I developed a love/hate relationship with this story. I loved the introduction of how zombies came into being. The development of the cure for the common cold and the cure for cancer was interesting and helped explained the back story from the Newsflesh series. I loved how Mira Grant gave a personality to the virus, how it patiently waited for the right time to infect and spread. My favorite party of the story was near the end when describing how the mom went into sudden “amplification” and her body turned and she became a zombie, so to speak.

Now, the hate part. Though Mira Grant is a great writer, I felt that parts of the story dragged. I had to force myself not skip through paragraphs so I wouldn’t miss anything that was going to be important that would give me a better insight into the world of Newflesh. Or, at least that’s what it felt like. Mira Grant managed to pull me into the story where I was afraid to pull my eyes away in fear that I will miss something, but able to kinda bore me at the same time.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Mira Grant. I love her detail and her characters. But for me, this novella was a little difficult to get through. I still loved it though. It helped satisfy my need for a zombie story that was different and though provoking; because let’s face it, maybe the cure for the common cold and cancer are right around the corner…and it’s just waiting to meet up and cause the end of the world.