Parasite (Parasitology #1) by Mira Grant
- Method of Obtaining: I traded for my copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
- Published by: Orbit Books
- Release Date: 10.29.2013
A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.
We owe our good health to a humble parasite – a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system – even secretes designer drugs. It’s been successful beyond the scientists’ wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.
But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives…and will do anything to get them.
Oh my goodness. Mira Grant is so fantastic people and this book did not disappoint at all (which reminds me that I need to go back and re-read the Newsflash trilogy and get reviews up!). When I got approved for Parasite I could not hold back my excitement and immediately downloaded it. This broke my rule of no reading until a month before release… which means this full review has been written for a few months and I’ve had to wait to release it.
So let’s get it started.
First: The cover. The design artist here, Lauren Panepinto, blew this one out of the water. Completely brilliant, perfectly matched to the story, eye-catching, and fantastic (especially since as of recently, there’s been a backlash against girly covers for female authors). I want to reach out and just touch that empty pill pocket and, once I saw the book, it didn’t matter to me who wrote it or what the title was, I wanted my hands on it just for the incredible cover alone. A+
Second: The plot. Once again, Grant connects with a modern audience by using everything at her disposal. When an author writes, many times that author will use first or third person to tell their story and forget that anything other than standard or italic text can be used (with a little bold when necessary). Grant pushes past those boundaries by using brackets to set scenes, switching back and forth between tenses, creating books and interviews from which to pull excerpts all so that the story can be supplemented and laid out in a systematic way. But was I surprised? Not at all. Anyone who has read Grant’s Newsflash trilogy will know how connected she is to the modern world of technology. So Parasite is no different, except it was something different. Mainly, no zombies! But something just as equally terrifying, I assure you.
Third: The pace. Grant’s method of unfolding a story is flawless. I kept thinking when big moments would happen that this was it, here was the cliffhanger and I would be stuck for at least a year waiting to read more. But, she didn’t do that to me (well, until the end of the book). Instead, she gave me cliffhangers and then resolved them so I walked away feeling as if I had actually been allowed more of the story than should have been there. It is hard to put into words, but it worked well and I felt satisfied and fulfilled along with anxious and ready for the next installment.
I highly recommend this book for sci-fi and non-sci-fi lovers alike. It’s thrilling, exciting, not too difficult to understand, has the perfect combination of creepiness and love story, and really, is one of the best books I’ve read this year.
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Pavarti K Tyler | Paperback Princess