Symbiont (Parasitology, #2)

by Mira Grant

[empressbrooke]

At first I thought this book had an especially bad case of middle-book-treading-water syndrome, and then I learned from other reviews (and it seems to be confirmed in press releases from Orbit when the first book was announced) that this wasn't even supposed to be a trilogy in the first place. And all I can say is that if you look at a duology and think, "What this really needs is an extra 500 pages of absolutely nothing happening so we can sell more copies," then you really deserve nothing more than some highly critical and disappointed reviews.

Most of the time, the middle book in a trilogy serves as a bridge and connects the action between the first and last book. Skilled writers will at least make the middle book worth reading. The middle book of Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy was especially worth reading, so I know she's capable of it. But literally nothing happened in this book that moved the narrative forward. Nothing new was revealed, nothing happened that could set up action further down the road. There was no interesting character development or world building. The main character goes from running for her life to being held captive to running for her life to being held captive. Somehow she does this with pluck even after two back-to-back brain surgeries. Other characters make bizarre decisions like saving potted plants when they're trying to narrowly escape from being eaten by tapeworm zombies.

I still plan on reading the final book in the trilogy in hopes that the author and publisher shoved all the unnecessary crap into this one and moved on to where the story was supposed to go in the first place. Plus, I like Mira Grant and it pains me that this stinker is out there with her name on it.