Chimera by Mira Grant
My rating: 4/5 cats
Forgiveness was for people who didn’t have as much to lose.
this is the third part in mira grant’s parasitology trilogy. but hopefully, fingers crossed, not the end of the story. not that it doesn’t wrap up well – it ends in a satisfying place, but as any mira grant fan knows, there’s always more to the story than can fit comfortably in a trilogy. and that’s why she has written 6 novellas and short stories branching out from her newsflesh series, with a fourth, full-length standalone book to be published in 2016 (!!!!yayyyyy!!!!!!) and just because she hasn’t yet written any parasitology offshoots, some of us have our fingers crossed into little twisty finger-tangles hoping this series will eventually get the same treatment. (and i’m also hoping for a published, illustrated version of Don’t Go Out Alone with the same desperate hopefulness i have for the publication of the graphic novel from Station Eleven)
because grant writes characters and situations i never want to see the end of.
and i’m not the only one, as is clear by lena’s comment in the thread: Have you started? How’s it going? How much Tansy is there? I need Tansy!!! to answer that question, not that much. and it’s … complicated. if tansy is your favorite character in these books (and she should be, or there’s something wrong with you), you might want to go back and reread the first two, because her adorable badassery is not a part of the story here. again, it’s … complicated.
this is still a great book, and it has many of the elements you expect from a book in this series – the concept that “person” doesn’t always mean “human,” the idea of moral subjectivity; that perspective goes a long way towards determining good and evil – How many people’s motives didn’t match up with what I’d taken for their actions? How many villains were the heroes of their own stories?, the quirky but oh-so-true observations of someone with a unique perception of the human body – Teeth always felt so big when you touched them with a tongue, and so small when you touched them with a finger, the humor, and above all – survival.
Being a monster is not the same as being a bad person. It just means you’re willing to eat the world if that’s what you have to do to keep yourself alive.
there’s plenty of harrowing action (k-mart is always terrifying in books like this), much more character development, a chess game-ish juggling of risk and situational trust and unexpected alliances, and some new developments on the sleepwalker front:
View Spoiler »overall, i did not love this trilogy as much as i loved the newsflesh series. i love the concept like crazy – it is completely original and offers fascinating possibilities and discussion-potential, but sal is not a character i’ve ever felt cuddly towards. i love her observations and i love sal-and-nathan, but this series has always been more about the ideas and the secondary characters for me. which, when you take tansy out of the picture, just leaves a giant tansy-shaped hole in my heart. this is definitely a more cerebral/philosophical trilogy than the “oh my god i love every single character and fear for them in every single chapter” emotional roller coaster of newsflesh. which ironically, makes me want parasitology e-novellas even more, since they aren’t usually about the “stars,” but are more about the situation, from new perspectives, and the situation is fantastic.
bottom line – i love mira grant with all of my heart and whether she writes about zombies or the thing this book is about, or mermaids, or beecher/keller fanfic (please please please!!) i will read it and read it enthusiastically. just bring it to me.
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best birthday week ever!
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november is the cruelest month…
although at least i will have something to be thankful for while i’m cramming turkey into my face.
