Parasite by Mira Grant
My rating: 4/5 cats
i’m calling it now – this is the year of the tapeworm.
seriously, TWO tapeworm novels in just a matter of months?? i am on a roll, boy howdy.
and as cool as tapewormy horror novels are, i was going to read this no matter what it was about, because i love mira grant.
greg got to this before i did, even though my desire for it was so great, so while he was reading it, i kept grilling him for feedback, and he was having a sort of tepid response to it. and when i finally started it myself, at first i was puzzled and scoldy: “why didn’t you love this? this is great! this is everything a mira grant book should be!”
it felt like a return home
but as i got further along, i had to admit that on every level, it is a lesser version of the glory that is the newsflesh trilogy. the characters are a little less sparkling, the science a little more dubious, there are some problems with her broadcasting situations that should have been surprising when revealed…
but honestly, the newsflesh trilogy took a little while to work its magic on me, so i have really high hopes for the rest of this series – i want to know where this is going.
with this book, we are asked to rally behind sal – a young woman who has, essentially, only been alive for six years. after a devastating car accident, she was diagnosed as irreparably brain dead, and was about to have her plug pulled when she suddenly woke up with absolutely no memory of her life before the hospital. physically, she is 26, but she has had to reacquaint herself with her family, learn how to read, and basically figure out how to become human all over again.
this isn’t always convincing – she seems to have picked up too much too quickly, has too much cleverness about her, and has even managed to land a boyfriend (reader crush alert!). she has way more conviction and strength than is realistic for someone who has only been alive for six years, and for someone who has been closely monitored and prodded the whole time, without getting much real-world experience. she has more personality than you would expect, and it is frequently an irritating one, but it is one of those “go with it” situations, and she grows on you. she does.
meanwhile, in the science portion of this book, the pharmaceutical industry is a thing of the past. most of the world’s population, including sal, have been implanted with genetically modified tapeworms which inhabit their human hosts and fix every imaginable ailment: allergies, diabetes, cancer – all are things of the past as the little tapeworms absorb and recalibrate and fix what ails ya. they are kind of like those contraceptive implants, only more ambitious. oh and birth control?? yeah, they do that, too.
and it’s all wonderful – no more pesky pills or injections, and the savings!
“They represent millions of dollars saved in pharmacological costs annually. That doesn’t even take into account the savings they naturally cause in the areas of preventative medicine and allergy control. They’ve changed the face of medicine.”
but now, those tapeworms appear to be responsible for an epidemic that has started causing people to go into a sleepwalking mode, and become erratic and violent. sal, with her status as human oddity/guinea pig to the symbogen corporation – the tapeworm pioneers taking credit for her miraculous recovery, her parasitologist boyfriend, and her scientist-father and -sister, is in a unique position to get to the bottom of the epidemic. but as she learns:
If you ask the questions, best be sure you want to know.
this may not be as satisfying as newsflesh, but it is still the warm bath of a mira grant book – it is instantly recognizable and comforting. all the newsflesh tricks are there: each chapter opens with a quote from a major player in the scientific community responsible for the outbreak and it all has that special mira grant plausibility to it, and once the “wait, tapeworms?? intentionally inside me??” has passed, you are grudgingly swept up in her measured and detailed explanations.
also, it has that mira grant humor i like:
“The lab is not prepared for civilian visitors. They’ll be ready for us shortly.”
“Do you mean ‘not prepared’ like ‘they need to clean up,’ or ‘not prepared’ like someone dropped a vial and now it’s all melting flesh and screaming’?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again if I didn’t know the answer.
it also has that tricky-to-pull-off idea that there aren’t good guys and bad guys, just better or worse guys.
“No one has only your best interests at heart. Not me, not your parents…and not View Spoiler » Whether you’ve met her or not, you should keep that in mind for when she does manage to catch up to you – and she is going to find you, Sally. She’s not the good to my evil. She’s not going to solve all of your problems with a wave of her hand and a cup of hot cocoa. You’re smart enough to know better than that. People like us…we don’t get easy answers like that.”
it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. it ends on a realization that anyone with more than six years of living or reading will have seen coming, but there are still plenty of questions, and knowing mira grant, more characters to meet, grow fond of, and then watch die. good times. also, dogs and carnivorous plants.
and i really hope they publish the children’s book referenced throughout – illustrated by someone who does the haunting-creepy well. maybe renee french?? i would buy it and treasure it.
a note on tansy. she was greg’s favorite character, and i can see the appeal of a tiny cute sociopath-pixie who kills without blinking and says very odd socially-inappropriate things, but she hasn’t grown on me just yet. but i’ll get there.
i want more and i want it now.
