DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

I read both books in the last couple of days. I finished Feed and thought of it as a good book, and that it would have been a great book if not for a few things that didn't really sit right with me. By the time I finished Deadline, I'd realized that both were absolutely excellent books.

I seem to have gone into Feed with the low-expectation mindset "I'm going to read this book by a blogger I follow", rather than "This is a book by a talented author who happens to have a blog I read". When bits made me raise an eyebrow (dramatic Tate death scene, aspects of Shaun and George's relationship, etc), I simply forgave it as inexpert writing. Which is absurd, because everything I've read on this blog has been very well-written. When I got through Deadline, I realized every one of those bits made me raise an eyebrow for a damn good reason. They were just as carefully orchestrated as every other bit of setup in the books.

The books are outstanding. It's been a long time since a passage in a book gutted me the way "she would have gotten better" did.

I'm dying to read Blackout, but at least I'll have time to reread Feed and Deadline with a whole new appreciation. And I have no doubt I'll love them even more after Blackout pulls even more threads through the trilogy.