Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: geeky
  • Music: Taylor Swift, "Long Live."

BLACKOUT open thread!

To celebrate the release of Blackout, here. Have an open thread to discuss the book.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.)

You can also start a book discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.

Have fun!
Tags: blackout, mira grant, zombies
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  • 357 comments

archangelbeth

May 24 2012, 00:43:45 UTC 5 years ago

*devours book in... a little over a couple hours, SCLORP*

My one complaint is... Not enough about the Zombie Hive Mind! I wanna know if the virus has some kind of telepathic neural resonance going on! O:D (Which, absent the brain-'cording bit, was my first speculation on how they'd gotten a self-aware clone with memories.)

But if there is/are future novella(s) planned, maybe my question will be answered there. O:>

dormouse_in_tea

May 25 2012, 02:52:42 UTC 5 years ago

Yeah, this is honestly still bothering me, after having read it twice. Shaun's haunting/hallucination...has the correct eyes. Something is going on there. And while I can handle it not being *explained*. . . I do not find it believable at all Shaun never said a damn thing about it, once Georgia-clone was there.

seanan_mcguire

May 25 2012, 14:17:06 UTC 5 years ago

Honestly, my intent, although I may not have managed to get it across, was that Georgia-the-hallucination's eyes were like that because Shaun's mind was still, even as it was fracturing, trying to protect him. That was the big "SHE IS NOT REAL" flag that it was waving in his face, and on some level, he knew it.

If he'd gone all the way over the edge, her eyes would have gone black, to match what they "should" be. As for why he never said anything...you have a very limited slice of time, during most of which he's terrified that one of them will die. They'll talk it out in a year, in Canada.

dormouse_in_tea

May 25 2012, 14:27:20 UTC 5 years ago

This is fair. I think I was a little too distracted by the fact that KA as a reservoir for intelligence was a possibility that occurred to me, that never got taken entirely off the table (because, of course, no one in the book knew enough to disillusion me) to really pick up on that. So that, combined with how convenient it ended up being (don't get me wrong, "Wait, you guys can see her too?" was HYSTERICAL, I laughed out loud, which was a problem, since I was reading in the bathroom at work and wasn't even really on break) served to get in my head and bug me a little.

Of course, the way haunting-Georgia shifted, at the end, being more obviously madness, was totally in the text and does serve to illustrate your point. I'm just a hard sell once I have an idear in my head. >_>

seanan_mcguire

May 25 2012, 14:28:00 UTC 5 years ago

Totally fair!

archangelbeth

May 26 2012, 01:39:53 UTC 5 years ago

(What the dormouse said! I was on the "is there a telepathic bond because of the whole virus reservoir thing??" mode speculation for a while. O:>

Also, "You can see her too??" was so delightful!)

Charles Ellis

May 25 2012, 17:12:02 UTC 5 years ago

At one point I was wondering if she actually was real in a way. It occurred to me that while the CDC was implanting Georgia's memories into her clones, they could have done something similar to Shaun. They would be inducing an entirely plausible breakdown in Shaun that would drastically reduce any future credibility. Unfortunately for the CDC (in this hypothetical scenario) between Shaun handling it just well enough to function and the support of his friends it never became enough of a handle for them to use.

Until the big reveal, the main argument against this possibility was that I couldn't recall you setting up a likely opportunity for the CDC to carry out the procedure.

vixyish

May 25 2012, 20:39:08 UTC 5 years ago

Yeah, I don't think they ever had that kind of access to Shaun.

ladytinyhelm

June 3 2012, 23:20:49 UTC 5 years ago

Yeah, I had the exact same theory. It just makes sense! (for certain definitions thereof, anyway)