Kingdom of Needle and Bone

by Mira Grant

[HekArtemis]

This is a little tricky to review. It has an interesting premise and plot, but it has a few problems.

I will say that if you are anti-vax, this is probably not the book for you. This book goes deep into anti-anti-vax preachiness. It's not just pro-vax, it is anti-anti-vax. At one point the MC is asked a question that I thought had a simple answer, instead she proceed to go on a page plus rant about anti-vaxers. Seemingly Grant had an anti-anti-vax axe to grind (try saying that 5 times fast lol). Okay, and the MC had a secret that I suppose made her want to place blame elsewhere.

On the other side though, there is representation of bad pro-vaxers, they get so bad in fact that they are advocating for laws to force complete loss of bodily autonomy, up to and including the removal of abortion rights.

I think that the anti-vax vs pro-vax stuff got a bit mess to be honest. It was hard to figure out who was who. The MC has her paediatric clinic picketed, people shouting that she is to blame somehow for the pandemic - and we soon find out that this group is essentially run by her own sister who is one of these pro-forced-vaxers. But the MC is giving vax to kids and adults, so why are they protesting her? Maybe it's just because her sister is ridiculous, sure. But I don't think that makes full sense. So what are they really protesting there? Seems like they should be anti-vax protestors because the MC is vaxing people.

Other than that my biggest frustration with this book was the weird moral complaints going on. I don't know, maybe I am weirdly practical or something. But they would be doing things that were in no way illegal or, imo, immoral or wrong or anything - and they kept talking about how they were scared the police were coming, they were worried they were monsters, they were definitely doing the wrong thing. But how? Look, yes, the MC herself does many things wrong - kidnapping kids, blowing up her clinic, and we discover at the end she is the cause of the pandemic in the most literal sense. And some of the safe zones took drastic measures, such us purposefully infecting their patients to prove to the world their safe zones needed to remain inviolable. But the secondary characters don't know any of this, and especially not at the start, so why are they so scared and acting so weird? It makes no sense to me. How is the idea of a safe zone bad, wrong, or illegal?

So yeah, I don't know, maybe there is something wrong with my moral view, maybe I am weird. But in the end, this book was pretty messy when it comes to certain things. Even with the various reveals along the way, certain things didn't add up quite right. Speaking of, what was the significance of the scene where the MC drops off a package to post out and we get a detailed paragraph about how outgoing mail is not sanitised?

I did like certain things about this book though. I found the virus itself to be interesting. But I really liked the solution the MC came up with, the islands. I thought that was cool. And the ending was good imo, quick, intriguing with that last line, and the fact that we get snippets of the MC being on trial in the future and oddly satisfying. As I started, this is a little tricky to review, I liked it but had several issues with it that made it not super enjoyable to actually read. I can't say for sure how I truly feel about this book, it's so mixed.