Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: busy
  • Music: The theme from Pokemon X.

PARASITE open thread!

To (somewhat belatedly) celebrate the release of Parasite, 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: mira grant, pandemic time, parasite
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  • 97 comments

disposable002

November 11 2013, 17:40:54 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  November 11 2013, 17:42:00 UTC

I really enjoyed the book. I wasn't sure that I would, the premise isn't really something that would have drawn me in but, since I've liked everything else Seanan/Mira has written, I gave it a shot. It was well worth it. As with all of her books, time flew by and I finished it all too soon. There was a big reveal for the protagonist that I saw coming from miles away as a reader. I think that we are supposed to see it coming; the suspense was in awaiting the character's realization. The ending was almost physically painful, since Big Things are about to happen. Fortunately, the next book is coming out reasonably soon.

I would recommend this for anybody with an interest in genetic engineering, and ethics in medicine. Also, anybody with a tapeworm. Also, tapeworms with an anybody.

aiela

November 11 2013, 17:51:46 UTC 3 years ago

Yeah, I'd figured out the "big reveal" before the book had even postulated that it was possible. I choose to believe this is intentional, because Seanan can be sneaky when she wants to, so I don't think she wanted to. I will admit it was a bit frustrating to me, though, to constantly go "WELL DUH BECAUSE X!"

I did see a post on...goodreads, I think? where someone was like "How could Symbogenesis not have known?" and it threw me, because to me, OBVIOUSLY they knew. Why else would they be so interested in her? It wasn't simply because her worm "saved" her. They knew full well what was going on, and wanted to study it. And they didn't want her to know.

herefox

November 11 2013, 18:01:47 UTC 3 years ago

I think it was intentional to see it. Which makes me nervous because the last time Seanan had a 'Well, duh' was with the villain in the first feed book and it was the one criticism I kept hearing about the book....and then it turned out to be slight of hand, sort of.

beccastareyes

November 11 2013, 18:15:57 UTC 3 years ago

Yes; I assume that when a a patient spontaneously recovers from a coma, but lacks any memory (either of their life experiences or operational memory of things like 'speech' and 'walking'), one would do a MRI to assess brain damage. Since Sal makes a point of telling us exactly how much testing she's had done, and Symbogen knew what was in their worms (unlike the doctors in the ER) and that they were directly crediting them with Sal's survival, I can't imagine they'd overlook this.

Heck, it could explain why they were so interested in keeping Sal on-campus as much as possible, as well as why they paid for her medical care: both to study her more and to keep other interested parties (like the government) from finding out what was up. I suspect only the fact neither Sal nor her parents trusted them (and her parents were well-connected enough to raise a giant stink) preserved Sal's freedom as long as it did.

aiela

November 11 2013, 18:16:45 UTC 3 years ago

Exactly. They didn't want anyone else looking at her too closely.

shanejayell

November 11 2013, 19:31:41 UTC 3 years ago

One also wonders how much evidence was destroyed after the acident too. The hospital records HAD to have either been switched or destroyed, to make sure no scans of Sal's brain were on file.

It's also interesting that Sal never talked to witnesses of the accident. Maybe she was encouraged not to?

beccastareyes

November 11 2013, 19:33:46 UTC 3 years ago

True. Or medical staff offered cushy jobs with Symbogen because 'well, you just made yourself an expert on this case'.

kyrielle

November 11 2013, 20:01:36 UTC 3 years ago

This. Also, antiparasitics and a new implant every couple years for most people, but it's been six for Sal - placebos? Or is it "safe" in the brain and fights off newcomers? But they had to have known - she was used to the ultrasounds and cat scans.

beccastareyes

November 11 2013, 20:16:17 UTC 3 years ago

The book mentions that a few of the times that Sal got life-threateningly ill was after she took anti-parasitics*, so evidently there was some attempt (perhaps not by Symbogen) to follow the normal care instructions. Afterward, even doctors not affiliated with Symbogen probably would tread with caution, the same way you would with any patient that has a severely bad reaction to a wide class of drugs.

What might seem more suspect is that the Intestinal Bodyguard is thought to only able to live for 2 years; even if Sal couldn't take the normal anti-parasitics to clear things out, her non-Symbogen doctors would expect her symbiote to die on its own eventually and for her to need a new one. (Then again, Symbogen would be in the position to slip her a placebo, as you say.)

* Which was one reason that she was willing to put up with Symbogen: when you have scary unknown medical problems, having top-of-the-line health care for free probably seems like a good deal AND Symbogen could use it as a 'look you really should work for us, so if this happens again, we can immediately treat you'.

disposable002

November 11 2013, 21:46:57 UTC 3 years ago

My assumption was that Symbogen deliberately made her ill with almost-certainly-fake anti-parasitics to ensure that she wouldn't take them on her own or from other doctors. I imagine that true anti-parasitics would probably put her into a vegetative state.

beccastareyes

November 11 2013, 22:11:45 UTC 3 years ago

Good thinking; I'd assumed that they weren't designed to enter the brain, so were less lethal than intended. (Not a medical doctor, nor a biologist, but I assume that it's easier to get drugs to the intestines than it is to the brain, and that 'poorly absorbed into the bloodstream' is a feature, not a bug, for anti-tapeworm drugs, since it's less likely to mess with human cells.) But that depends on how much the symbiote can rely on the human brain tissue and how much it relies on its internal processes (and for what).

But if Sal could be scared off of taking them on her own, that would be for the best.

kyrielle

November 12 2013, 03:16:08 UTC 3 years ago

*facepalm* And this is what I get for posting with half a brain, and also for not -really- registering things fully, yes.

REALLY do not see how Symbogen could not have known: I have to assume, unless proven otherwise in the sequel, that they did.

jenfullmoon

November 12 2013, 07:02:24 UTC 3 years ago

Well, they remove them after 2 years, but the worms don't die on their own--they could stay in there. They would just get bigger...or do other things.

museclio

November 11 2013, 19:52:53 UTC 3 years ago

That was my take as well. They knew.

azurelunatic

November 12 2013, 00:04:40 UTC 3 years ago

I wasn't taking detailed notes at that point, but I was like "waaaaaait...." at some point before page 25, and then by page 300 I was crowing "I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT". So then I was wondering when Sal would figure it out.

naath

November 12 2013, 12:24:58 UTC 3 years ago

Yeah, it was way to obvious to be meant to be sneaky... but Sal's ability to refuse to see what's in front of her, that's interesting and building up to her actually realising it consciously was super interesting.

ironed_orchid

December 12 2013, 11:20:33 UTC 3 years ago

Yeah, that's how I read it.

What interested me was that Sal and Toby are alike in the not being able to see how certain facts apply to them until it gets spelled out. Even if they aren't alike in many other ways. I felt like Sal's backstory, and the reinforcement of how much she had to learn in 6 years, which meant she was an adult, but without some forms of maturity, made it believable, as did the potential horror of what she was avoiding thinking about.