Blackout (Newsflesh, Book 3)

This is the third book in the Newflesh series. See my other reviews here: Feed ° Deadline

Blackout (Newsflesh, Book 3) by Mira Grant

Book description: Rise up while you can. -Georgia Mason

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.

BLACKOUT is the conclusion to the epic trilogy that began in the Hugo-nominated FEED and the sequel, DEADLINE.

Final books in series make me sad. I know this is the end, and I’m going to miss the characters and the world. And the zombies. I can never get enough of the zombies.

The other thing is, third books are rarely as good as the two that preceded it. No exception here. The plot was not near as compelling and there were a lot of things that only make sense if you don’t think about them too hard. On top of that you still have  the fact that the author tends to tell you the same things over and over. YES, we get that Shaun is crazy. We get that the rest of the team ignores that he’s talking to himself. Seriously, we get it.

I did like that we got Georgia back as part time narrator. That was one big plus to the book. I missed her in Deadline, and really enjoyed the parts that from her perspective. Not that I minded Shaun’s parts. I’d gotten used to him as narrator, but he is not nearly as interesting as George.

Then there was the ending. In the first two books, the ending made the books.. I know that  you can’t have some big surprise cliff hanger ending in this type of book. But we’re chasing a conspiracy here! You want to be blown away by the big reveal. When we finally got there in Blackout I was underwhelmed. I found myself thinking, Wait, that’s it? That is the reason for all the hoopla? Seriously? It just seemed like there would be much easier ways to keep that secret. I guess half of the reason was enough to kill and hide, the part that would make it harder for people to "pull the trigger" on the zombies. But the other thing? I don’t know. It was just kind of ...meh.

Book 3’s are why I shouldn’t, logically, like trilogies. But so help me, I do love them. I’m glad I read the series, even though the ending was a bit disappointing. I loved the world, I loved the characters and I loved the zombies. A few loose ends and a less than stellar conspiracy are not going to change that.

On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically awful, I would give this book a Good. It wouldn’t be able to stand on it’s own, but as a final book in an excellent trilogy, it works ok. It wasn’t a bad book, it just could have been so much more.