Emily May's Reviews > Feed

Looks like I'm going to have to add this book to the list I call 'Popular books I can't appreciate' along with novels like The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Magic Bites. To all those goodreads members who loved this book - I tried, I swear I did. I finished a book that failed to grab my interest one bit right up to the last page, I have never forced myself to read 571 pages of a book that felt like wading through sludge. Perhaps I am not intelligent enough for this story, but whatever the reason, I've come away with nothing but relief that it is now over.

I won't give it 1 star, it is not a bad novel. The characters were varied and developed, the writing was sophisticated... but the story was just boring. Drab. Dull. I have mixed feelings about zombie novels; zombies themselves don't interest or scare me so there has to be something more to the story - this wasn't a problem. In fact, the book wasn't largely dedicated to flesh-eating and zombie moans, it was dedicated to something which I am very interested in and should have been what sold the book to me: politics.

I am a self-confessed politics nerd, I have been for a long time - probably ever since I was eleven reading Orwell's 1984 and discovering for the first time how politics could be used to create one hell of a fictional story. I was delighted when I read that the novel was more political than anything else. Ah, well, it wasn't what I expected. In fact, this novel is one very long, drawn-out presidential campaign that made me want to tear my hair out with boredom. I am very surprised that I finished the book at all.

I think I was waiting for a great pivotal change to occur about half way through - I've read several reviews saying that the pace picks up in the second half. I would say it does... marginally. I think other members obviously found a greater difference between the first and second halves that I didn't pick up on. It's difficult to say a novel is 'slow' to get going when I never really thought it did. Get going, that is.

I found Feed to be a novel that was too long, too dull and too concerned with technical mumbo-jumbo. I'm not a genius but I'm no idiot either and I can't believe that I could be the only one thinking "what on earth?" at all the medical lingo and weird descriptions of things that I'd never heard of. I like books that can be educational as well as fictional but if I don't know what the author's talking about I can't take anything away from the experience.

By about page 300 of this book, I would look at it on my desk and want to groan at the thought of picking it up again. I cannot imagine there would ever be any desire in me to pick up Deadline.