antipaucity

I finished the Newsflesh trilogy this week, which culminated in Mira Grant’s book Blackout.

The basic storyline and character development continued apace, and the story does end admirably.

If you’ve read the first two, you should finish the trilogy. This one adds human cloning as a core plot point, and does it well.

However, I have a couple things to complain about:

• Grant upped the vulgarity in the last book over the second which was more than the first; most of the vulgarity seems like it was put in just because she could
• The relationship between the two primary characters gets, well, uncomfortable; debatable as to the morality of it, but suffice to say it could have been done without

People you want offed don’t get it, people you want saved aren’t, and overall the character list changes in ways that would allow further writing in the Newsfleshiverse, but I doubt Grant will do any more therein. She didn’t approach the stories the way Tom Clancy did with his Ryanverse. It’s nice that you won’t feel compelled to read more of her writing if you really enjoyed these characters, but it’s sad, too, that she chose to only do a trilogy (though there is an eBook-only prequel previewed at the end of Blackout).

Trilogies seem the be de rigueur in writing these days (The Hunger Games, Newsflesh, and many more come to mind). Personally, I’d prefer that an author write as much as they have to write that is a good story – if it’s one book, awesome (authors like Alistair MacLean and Michael Crichton come to mind); but if it’s multiple, then keep going as long as you have good stories to tell.

Now that this series is over, looks like I need a new one.

Next on my reading list is Germline.