The Feed

by Nick Clark Windo

Set in a post-apocalyptic world as unique and vividly imagined as those of Station Eleven and The Girl with All the Gifts, a startling and timely debut that explores what it is to be human and what it truly means to be connected in the digital age.

IT MAKES US. IT DESTROYS US. NOW WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT IT.

The Feed is accessible everywhere, by everyone, at any time. It instantaneously links us to all information and global events as they break. Every interaction, every emotion, every image can be shared through it; it is the essential tool everyone relies on to know and understand the thoughts and feelings of partners, parents, friends, children, colleagues, bosses, employees . . . in fact, of anyone and everyone else in the world.

Tom and Kate use the Feed, but Tom has resisted its addiction, which makes him suspect to his family. After all, his father created it. But that opposition to constant connection serves Tom and Kate well when the Feed collapses after a horrific tragedy shatters the world as they know it.

The Feed’s collapse, taking modern society with it, leaves people scavenging to survive. Finding food is truly a matter of life and death. Minor ailments, previously treatable, now kill. And while the collapse has demolished the trappings of the modern world, it has also eroded trust. In a world where survival of the fittest is a way of life, there is no one to depend upon except yourself . . . and maybe even that is no longer true.

Tom and Kate have managed to protect themselves and their family. But then their six-year-old daughter, Bea, goes missing. Who has taken her? How do you begin to look for someone in a world without technology? And what happens when you can no longer even be certain that the people you love are really who they claim to be?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Post Apocalyptic, Thriller, Horror, Audiobook

341 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 25, 2018

About the author

Nick Clark Windo studied English Literature at Cambridge University and acting at RADA.

As well as writing, he works as a film producer and communications coach. He lives in London with his wife and daughter. The Feed is his first novel.

Reviews

[Emily B · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only managed to really start enjoying this book after reading 150 pages. I nearly gave it three stars based on the second half of the book.

I found it had an Interesting concept but it was never full explained, which was a little frustrating.
I also felt that the aside from the main two characters, other were too forgettable and not very distinct from each other.

[Stace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Reviewed by Stacey on www.whisperingstories.com

I started reading this book a few months ago, unfortunately, due to time constraints I had to put it to one side for a while as it wasn’t really a book I could dip in and out of – I know I tried – As the story was quite complex, for me anyway. Whilst I love Dystopian fiction some elements felt quite Sci-Fiy (is that even a word) and Sci-Fi isn’t something I read often, hence I needed to concentrate on the book.

The story begins in the not too distant future in a world where people are connected to ‘The Feed’, they do most things via it, including communicate with one another – Even when sat facing each other, spoken language is rarely used. You can see another person’s fears, worries, memories, loves, just about everything about another person via The Feed. Just think of today’s social media but with the ability to see into the person you are connecting with. This has been happening for years and is a way of life.

However, one day The Feed goes offline. Imagine a world where people don’t know how to communicate with one another, let alone speak out loud. There is also another scary element to The Feed disappearing, it is easily hijacked and people are vanishing in their sleep, so when you sleep someone has to watch over you.

The Feed is one amazing book set in a world where people don’t know how to be just like we are in today’s society. Imagine if the internet vanished and you couldn’t access anything via the web anymore, how would life exist, how would businesses exist. Imagine that scenario but with a more serious element to it, you or someone you love could easily be taken by someone or something hijacking the now dead internet. Quite scary to think about.

This is a book that makes you think, not only about the future but about the use and quite often overuse of technology today. It is full of surprises and twists and turns. It did feel a little slow to get going, but once past the first couple of chapters the pace picked up and the book came alive. The characters all fitted together perfectly and whilst the premise of disappearing in your sleep might seem a little far-fetched, the bonding and behaviour of the cast made this book perfectly realistic.

It’s hard to believe reading this novel that it is written by a debut author, the writing is that good. If you love Dystopian fiction then this is a book for you. Also, I believe that there will soon be a TV series based on the book. I hope that they keep to the plot and do the book justice. I for one will be watching it.

[Kirsty ❤️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a lot of horror books and not really been scared but whilst this doesn't fit that category social media is everywhere and the idea of an apocalypse occurring when everything is switched off is something I can actually see happening and find quite scary. Whilst the switching off wouldn't cause me to have mass panic like some I can really feel for these characters especially Danny who has only ever known this way of life and struggles to cope in the real world without the network contact. 

The opening chapter is great and a brilliant set up for the rest of the book but once the dystopian post-apocalypse part kicked in I felt it didn't follow through on the premise and I was left wanting more.  The writing style changes (to tie in with the lifestyle change I assume) and I couldn't quite gel with it. It felt very disjointed and I often got confused as to where one character paragraph ended and the next started.

It's not a bad book, the idea is a really good one but for me I wanted more from the story.

Free arc from netgalley

[Stacey Camp · Rating 5 out of 5]

**5 Goodreads Stars**

"Who did you first share your thoughts with? It was the most intimate feeling, wasn't it? Nothing between you, no way to lie, just pure and perfect thinking. All of us, plaited together."

"The space we create, that we forge with our lives - that's what we have to protect. We work hard for such an inconsequential space, but it is absolutely everything to us."

Nick Clark Windo's The Feed is a beautifully written, darkly intense dystopian novel concerning the future of humankind in a technology saturated world. 

Imagine if Twitter and Facebook were implanted in your brain; you could access non-stop thoughts, memories, and newsfeeds of everyone in the entire world. This is the world in which  The Feed is set, and this is what "the Feed" refers to. It isn't hard to envision our world moving in that direction in the not so distant future. 

Despite the draw and addicting allure of "the Feed," there are some citizens who don't like it. They are known as the "Resistors," people who have reverse engineered or reverse biohacked their implants, including such things as microphones in one's lip. They have physically cut out the implants from their bodies to avoid "the Feed."

The book begins with Tom and Kate, a couple who have strong feelings about "the Feed." Tom is adamantly opposed to it despite the fact his father and brother, Ben, were the creators of it. Kate enjoys the fanfare of the "Feed," as she is essentially what we would consider a viral YouTuber in her world. She has lots of followers, and experiences endorphin rushes when they share or praise her content. 

When "the Feed" is hacked by an unknown group, society as Kate and Tom know it collapses. Think Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Cormac McCarthy's The Road collapse. It's bad, and what makes it worse is that most of the world has become so reliant on "the Feed" to tell them what to do that they have no clue how to do the most quotidian things. All information has been digitized. Physical books are obsolete. Medications and products are marked with QR codes rather than text describing their contents and use. If you needed to know how to cook a meal, you pull it up on "the Feed." The Feed's absence renders most people helpless, leaving few people and little knowledge left to rebuild the world. Even language and vocalization have to be rediscovered, as most people communicated through their minds via "the Feed."

The hacking of "the Feed" has also caused a mysterious illness infecting millions of people across the globe. This illness only comes on at night while people are sleeping, which means that someone always has to stay up watching their friend or family member for signs of infection. The infection causes people's personalities to dramatically change to point that they often kill or attack their friends or family members. The only way to "cure" this illness is to kill the infected person. It only infects people with "the Feed" implants, so Resistors without implants have slowly been taking over civilization.

I'll admit it took me a few days to really get into this book. This is because the book's world is so rich and intricate that you have to memorize and learn lots of new vocabulary/terms. This is what makes the book so successful, though. Once you get into the book's brave new world, you find yourself enmeshed in its uniqueness. Once I got 25% of the way through the book, I could not put it down. There are so many unexpected, exciting twists and turns in this book, but they make sense within the context of the story and the characters' personalities and motivations. There were a few moments at the beginning of the book where I felt like I was reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but I mean that as a compliment. 

To close,  The Feed  provides timely, apt criticism of our digitally infused world. It encourages the reader to reflect upon the potential long term social and environmental consequences of a digitally connected and digitally addicted world. For those of you who are already itching to get a copy of The Feed, you'll have to wait until March 13, 2018. I can assure you, however, that it is definitely worth the wait. Thank you to the author, Nick Clark Windo, the publisher, HarperCollins, and Edelweiss for providing me with an advanced ready copy of  The Feed .

[Edgarr Alien Pooh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Today we are all hooked up together with the internet. We can look up anything we want, find out what we need to know, and converse anytime we want. All information is at our fingertips.

THE FEED is similar except we get the knowledge directly from one another. No need for conversation, just being with a person will give you all the information you need. The FEED provides all the information you need except there is no need to type into a computer, it is all passed from person to person without a word.

How do you feel when the internet goes down? Annoyed, frustrated, panicked? But it's usually only for a short time, right? Imagine if it was forever, imagine if it was gone for good. Knowledge and communication would be like yesteryear. Well, The FEED goes down forever. Corrupted by unknown outside forces, it is lost to everyone. The problem is that some people were born attached to the feed and had lived their whole lives with the Feed.

So The Feed reads as a sort of dystopian novel. The Feed is gone and people all over the place are dying, nobody remembers how to produce food or fix things correctly because they always got the information from the feed. Added to this is the bizarre problem of people "turning" during their sleep. The "turn" is to become somebody else within the body of the original person.

The story revolves around Tom and Kate, the son and daughter-in-law of the man who designed, built, and ran the FEED. They have survived the crash of the Feed and need to find their own way in the 'new' world.

Unfortunately, I found this book to be VERY slow. It took a long time for the story to unfold and when it did it really didn't go anywhere. There was a tonne of potential in the plot line but it just petered out to nothing and, to be honest, nothing was ever really resolved.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prologue of The Feed is a snapshot of future society just as it begins to crumble. As they spend the evening in a restaurant, Tom is trying to persuade his wife Kate to switch off her Feed, if only for a few minutes. The Feed is an invention that's transformed human life, making it possible for everyone to be permanently plugged in to a neverending stream of information and communication, augmenting everything about what one experiences in reality. (Advertisements, for example, no longer exist in the physical world. There are just 'quickcodes' which cause relevant ads to display to anyone who looks at them – as long as they're connected to the Feed, but then everyone is except extremist Resisters.) The characters' conversation is interrupted by a shockwave spreading around them as the same scene is beamed into everyone's Feed. The President has been assassinated; it's the beginning of the end.

Six years later, we find Tom, Kate and their daughter Bea living alongside a handful of other survivors. Thousands died when the Feed collapsed, and those who remain are damaged, often confused, and lacking in many of the skills needed to create a self-sufficient community. There's also the threat of being 'taken', when a hacker hijacks one's mind using the old biological hardware required to make the Feed work. These characters have been left in relative peace so far – but then two of the group are taken in quick succession, and Bea disappears, prompting Tom and Kate to set out across the ravaged country in the hope of finding her.

Inevitably, when I read stories like this, I find their settings and contexts and technology – their worlds – far more interesting than whatever the characters are doing. And Nick Clark Windo has put a lot of worldbuilding into The Feed; I could have quite happily read about life both pre- and post-collapse all day. There are tons of details to get your teeth into as Tom and Kate traverse a landscape made strange by loss and decay, shaped by desperation and the art of making do with what's left. Scenes like those with the spiked van, the Pharmacist and the 'human animal' will haunt me for a while.

Where the book stumbles is in the construction of its characters. I disliked both Tom and Kate, and I couldn't get a sense of their bond with Bea, or care about their quest to find her. When you find yourself thinking 'I wouldn't be bothered if any or all of these people died', it's... usually a bad sign. BUT! Halfway through, there's a monumental, genius twist that changes everything. I can't say any more than that without spoiling it.

The Feed lacks the humanity of Station Eleven, which the blurb (naturally) compares it to. It reminded me more of a cross between Louise Welsh's No Dominion and Liam Brown's Broadcast. If carefully constructed future worlds matter more to you than likeable characters, you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of this. And at least the ending is almost on a par with Gone Girl as far as 'awful outcomes for awful people' go.

I received an advance review copy of The Feed from the publisher through NetGalley.

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[Dannii Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating 3.75/5 stars.

The Feed has access to every memory and every particle of knowledge you and the whole world possesses. The Feed knows how you shop and what to sell you. The Feed allows conversations to be transferred in milliseconds and conveys them from only the face and body you want others to see.

But then The Feed becomes corrupted and the whole world falls prey to a silent killer. There is now only a black hole where once everything humans had become was contained. Without access to every aspect of the world at their fingertips humans must relearn how to interact with each other and how to construct a new life for themselves from the debris of what remains.

This was such an intriguing concept and a unique take on the post-apocalyptic trope. The inclusion of this high-tech failure was a scarily real-feeling addition. I loved learning about the world before, so familiar to our own where humans resided in social media bubbles separate to the physical world surrounding them. It was painted in sharp contrast to the dog-eat-dog atmosphere grown from the bones of this seemingly infinite yet utterly defeated world, which Windo invites us to enter long after its initial destruction.

The humans who we meet there are shells of who they were before it. Everything from memories to simple words and phrases now escape them, so little used is the muscle of their brain, which often culminated in poignant and distressing scenes that focused on grief and the loss of the past but also the inability to both process or separate from it.

The social commentary expose, for our own contemporary times, was obvious. We have lost touch of humanity as we seek to become ever more robotic in our everyday encounters. The ease of interactions unspooled directly from one brain into another can not compare to the lost art of slow conversation and the discovery of who we truly are along the way.

Despite being utterly enamoured in discovering this new world and being shocked to speechlessness with the mid-way plot twist, this was a little unsatisfying in its conclusion. I had questions I felt deserved answers and the world we explored much of, in geographical terms, still felt a little barren to me in other areas. I appreciated all this did but also was looking for a more permanent conclusion or answers on how to escape the horrors of the past (and just what exactly they were) which were all hinted at in less concrete terms than I ultimately would have liked.

[Indieflower · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm partial to some post apocalyptic/dystopian shenanigans but this didn't really do it for me. Set in a world where everyone is hooked up to "the feed", communicating mostly in their heads through weird feed speak and emojis, no longer having to really use their minds at all, for social cues, memories or even acquired knowledge. So what happens when the feed goes down? Well not much for the first 150 pages, then the pace picked up somewhat, still hit and miss, though there was an interesting twist that I didn't see coming (probably because I wasn't paying enough attention 😬) and that was enough to keep me reading to the end. All in all, mildly interesting, but not the book I wanted it to be.

[Mogsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2018/03/25/...

We’ve all heard the cautionary tales involving social media, about the dangers of being constantly plugged in. Nick Clark Windo’s dark thriller debut takes this idea even further, imagining a future where people are permanently connected via implants so that access to everything is instantaneous as well as continuous. This is “the Feed” that the novel’s title is referring to—a new tech that humans have become so dependent on, and so addicted to, that society can no longer function without it. And so, when the Feed collapses one day, the results are predictably catastrophic. Some of the most basic skills and knowledge are lost to the digital abyss as everyone must now learn how to survive offline and fend for themselves in this Feed-less new world.

For couple Kate and Tom, the adjustment has not been easy. But they have managed to keep going the past few years, living with a group of survivors as they raised their daughter Bea, who was born post-collapse. But then one day, Bea goes missing, snatched away by raiders, and so Kate and Tom must embark on a treacherous journey to bring her back.

It’s said that things have to get bad before they can get better, and likewise, some books make you go through some really rough patches before you can get to the good parts of the story. The Feed was a book like that. For most of the first half, I struggled with nearly everything—the characters, the plot, the world-building. From the moment the story opened, my patience was put to the test. I found both protagonists horribly off-putting. Kate was especially annoying, as a heavy user of the Feed before its collapse. She was an attention monger, self-absorbed and totally oblivious. To be fair, she was probably written this way by design, but in this case the author might have overplayed her personality. Tom, on the other hand, struck me as bland and lacking in any spirit or agency. I didn’t feel like I could connect to either of them at all, which made the first part of this book a difficult slog. I also struggled with the world-building and the exaggerated side effects of the Feed. Humans are biologically hard-wired for curiosity, and I found it hard to believe that almost the entire population would simply surrender themselves to the Feed unquestioningly and let themselves become so helpless.

And then the collapse happened, and subsequently, Bea’s disappearance really turned things around. Not to the point where I suddenly loved the book, mind you, but the story did become immensely more enjoyable once Tom and Kate finally had something to fight for. The second half of The Feed unfolded a lot more like a traditional dystopian novel, following our protagonists as they traversed the post-apocalyptic landscape, encountering violence and suffering. However, there is also a unique element to this world, which comes in the form of a very specialized threat. Even after the collapse, the sinister legacy of the Feed remains as those who possess the biological implants live in fear of being “taken”, a term to describe the process of being hacked and having your consciousness along with your personality and memories wiped clean and replaced. The result is a lot of chaos, mistrust, and panic, along with an “us vs. them” mentality among the survivors. While The Feed is not a zombie story, you can see how the overall tone and some of its themes can sometimes make it feel like one.

There is also a monumental twist near the end that changed nearly everything, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it simply because it was so out of left field. Did it make this book more interesting? Yes. But in terms of whether it made the story more coherent or feasible, probably not. That said, I’m impressed with how Windo handled the challenges that came about because of this surprising development. Everything could have fallen apart, but ultimately he was able to keep the threads of the story together and saw things through to the end.

I won’t lie, there were a lot of issues with this novel, particularly with the pacing and balance of the story’s numerous concepts. Still, there were plenty of fascinating ideas in here that I appreciated for their originality, especially once I got past the initial hurdles. There’s an almost sputtering, sporadic feel to the plot; in some ways, it’s like an engine that needs to be primed several times before it catches, but once it starts running, the ride smooths out and becomes a lot more enjoyable. The journey was certainly not boring, and that’s probably the best thing I can say about a novel in a saturated market like the dystopian genre.

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5* rounded up
Very interesting concept, pacing goes back and forth between slow and alert

[Jenny in Neverland · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Feed is, to put it simply, an exceptionally elaborate and advanced form of social media. But instead of on an iPhone or a laptop, it’s all ingrained in your head and you can access anything, anyone and everything instantaneously. It’s addictive and life-altering and it’s gone so far that most humans can’t function without it. Then one day, it collapses and everyone is offline. Our main characters, Tom and Kate manage without it and find a way to survive with their daughter, Bea and a camp of others, adapting to the new ways of life that the collapse of The Feed has forced them into. Then one day, Bea goes missing and Tom and Kate head out on a truly treacherous mission to find her amongst a world of no technology, savages and threats far beyond our imagination.

Okay, just to put it out there, I have a lot of thoughts about this book. Some good but mostly bad / annoying. But bear with me. First of all, I loved the concept. I’m not opposed to a bit of Sci-Fi every now and again and being a bit of a social media addict myself, this concept sounded right up my street and I was instantly drawn in to it by the blurb and the cover. With very little information about what The Feed is at first, you’re going into the book with so many questions that anything is possible.

The book begins with a look of “Feed talk“. It’s all very rapid and almost like the language was trying to emulate what was going on in someone’s brain whilst using The Feed but I don’t now if it was the formatting of the copy I had on my Kindle but I had a few problems with this section (after this in the normal bulk of the story, the formatting was absolutely fine!). I noticed a few wording mistakes which shouldn’t have been there and on occasion, I felt like I was reading a sentence which was in the wrong part of the book which made no sense to the one that came before or after it. I don’t know if this was intentional but nevertheless, it was weird and kinda annoying.

Another huge problem I had which made me struggle with this book more than I would have otherwise was that there were no chapters just a few really long sections. No chapters is something I cannot stand. But that’s just a personal preference and something someone else might not be at all affected by.

But something kept me reading The Feed and I think it was the need to know more about this world they live in. It was very interesting and very unique and original. It had almost a Walking Dead vibe to it, after the collapse and roads were deserted and cars were upturned and houses were ransacked. I did find it very difficult to picture some of the settings, however. I loved the first part where Tom and Kate lived in their camp (an old farm house with land) with a few other people, including their daughter. It was a nice part of the book which, now having finished it, was like the calm before the storm. But everything after that big, the city and the buildings they were in, I found it very hard to imagine. In a way that, if this was turned into a movie, then it would look words apart from how I’m feebly attempting to imagine it in my head.

Thinking about it now, this book would actually make an amazing film or TV show!

One more niggle was that Kate was a desperately annoying and two dimensional character. I couldn’t tell you a single trait she had or something she loved (other than her daughter) or anything of substance. In fact, none of the characters I felt were particularly interesting or vibrant. Except Sylene who was intriguing – especially how she came to be in the story. I definitely feel, personally, that the writing was very much focused more on the settings a rather than the characters and the people and for me, I prefer it the other way around.

Enough moaning, I am very confused about this book because like I said, it kept me reading. I finished the last 15% in one sitting and I wanted to know more and what was going to happen next. Which is obviously what a book should do to the reader. But there were too many “little things” which irked me to give it a higher rating than I have. If the author wrote another book with a similarly interesting and unique idea, would I read it? Yes, probably. If they made this story into a film, would I watch it? Heck yes, definitely! If I could rate on originality and storyline then this wouldh ave got a 4.5 but I have to take everything else into consideration when rating a book. I certainly wouldn’t encourage people not to read it though because it has a lot of potential to be a very popular read next year when its released!

You can find all my book reviews here: www.jennyinneverland.com

[Liviu Szoke · Rating 4 out of 5]

O înfricoșătoare distopie care va fi în curând adaptată de studiourile Amazon. Feedul este de fapt un dispozitiv implantat în interiorul corpului oamenilor (bebelușilor le este implantat încă de când se află în uterul mamei), cu ajutorul căruia pot comunica unii cu alții în timp real, pot accesa instantaneu orice informații, citi orice, călători oriunde, scrie mesaje, internet/om/computer într-un singur trup.
Numai că problemele omenirii încep odată cu Prăbușirea Feedului, când oamenii încep să fie „locuiți” de entități misterioase, care le răpesc mințile și-i transformă în cu totul altcineva. Încet, încet, se instaurează haosul și în doar șase ani omenirea regresează la stadiul de nomazi care nu mai știu nici măcar să vorbească așa cum trebuie.
Așa este când ești cu totul și cu totul dependent de tehnologie, asta și fiind de fapt tema principală a romanului: dependența noastră prea mare față de tehnologia din ce în ce mai performantă.
Ritm alert și nu prea, capitole de sute de pagini, pagini sfâșietoare, dublate de introspecții prelungi și amintiri disparate, cu ajutorul cărora reușim să reconstituim și noi, alături de personaje, ce s-a întâmplat atunci, în timpul Prăbușirii, ce anume a dus la Prăbușire și cum și-ar putea reveni omenirea.

[Figgy]

RTC

Elements of stories like Walking Dead and others that I can't mention because of spoilers... but, you know what, not entirely engaging or amazing, even though I quite enjoy the shows and books that clearly inspired this one.

The writing is... fine. But the character building is pretty much non-existent, and the only character I actually related to didn't show up until around half-way through. Also... the "chapters" are hundreds of pages long, with scene breaks rather than chapter breaks... a personal pet peeve.

I had actually given up on this book (not actively... but I had set it aside and didn't feel any great desire to continue) at around 40% for about two weeks, but then I read something in a review about how there was a twist around 40% in, so I got the audio to keep pushing through on my long drives to work.

The twist, which is reasonably easy to predict for those who frequent the genre, did help the pacing of the story a little, and the events thereafter were a little more interesting and different, but it only came in at around 50%, and by then I really didn't care enough to feel for any of them. And it's not different enough to really surprise or challenge fans of the genre.

The first 50% is this plodding, unoriginal, undeveloped... thing. While the second half is better, it didn't do enough to change my mind after all the plodding beforehand.

Also, the main catalysts of this story were super manipulative I'm talking children being stolen so the adults have to chase after them, and the apparently required-for-emotional-impact dog who is bound to be killed, and in this instance only stuck around for about three scenes (see: not long enough to get attached, but long enough for readers to see that this was the author's attempt to manipulate them)

My advice would be if you're going to do this one, get the audio. The narrators are quite good (including the author), and it does disguise the areas the writing is lacking, such as the characterisation and the world-building.

[Laura]

Book reviews on www.snazzybooks.com

The Feed is a really unique, interesting dystopian-style novel (I won't say 'thriller' as I don't think it's really that kinda book, and I'll explain why) which I enjoyed reading.

I felt that it was fairly slow to start with, taking time to build characters and a sense of this world that Tom and Kate (and the people around them) live in. Because a lot has changed between the real world of today and the fictional world that the story is set in, there's a lot to take in with regards to details and occurrences as things begin to fall apart. We then skip forward 6 years and see how things have developed.

I struggled to warm to the main characters, but there's kind of a reason for that as you read on. There are some interesting developments and surprises which took the book, for me, from a fairly slow read to suddenly a much more interesting one - I really like the way the author ramps up the tension as the book goes on. The second half of the book definitely features more 'action' but I still wouldn't categorize this as a thriller, as it's much more about the characters and the setting they live in, rather than what they're doing - though of course this does play a key part too, as they desperately try to search for their missing daughter.

I loved the idea of humans becoming reliant on a kind of social network which is embedded inside us; with our seemingly growing reliance on social media and technology, this is a very pertinent story which makes you sit back and consider how realistic this is. Worryingly, I can actually imagine this kind of thing happening one day.

I don't want to say any more as I don't want to give too much away, but this is definitely a recommended read for anyone who enjoys a different and intriguing dystopian read.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of this novel on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Feed does not create any physical sensation, its an implant, bio-tech with no battery source, the human is the power source.
And then…
A collapse
all feeds stopped
devastation upon the earth
people scattered
some survivors and some taken
the characters within this tale on the road in search for food and ways to bring back vegetation and then in search for the ones taken.
This barren devastation upon earth has the reader immersed within the story in a world with all that comes with survival and moving forward the story visceral, panoramic, and pastoral with clear telling before the reader.
This would appeal to readers who have liked Swan Song by Robert McCammon, The Stand by Stephen King, and The Road by Cormac Mccarthy. This has some good story, nice clear prose may not be as big as opus as some other great tales with similar subject matter but just as captivating, a modest tale in world gone topsy turvy, moral lines crossed and abuses upon the earth reaped upon the denizens of earth, an encompassing narrative that captivates the reader with the fates of a few souls and the earth as a whole in the need of finding things, truths, lost, and the taken.

“…and for a long time we didn’t realise it was happening. So many people were taken, and there was no way of knowing. Because everyone looked the same, right? But these normal-looking people suddenly started doing bad things. Very bad things. Killing other people. Destroying buildings, power stations, trying to disrupt the airports. They killed the president. We didn’t know who was themselves and who was someone else. It was…terrible. They did awful things they’d never otherwise have done. But we realised people were being taken over in their sleep. So it became law: never to sleep alone, never to sleep unwatched. And..there were signs we had to look for. It stopped being a law that you couldn’t…Basically, Bea, if you saw someone being taken, it wasn’t against the law to…”

“At ground level, they enter streets where disorder rules: the devastation is random, it seems. Sometimes single houses are gutted while their neighbours are pristine. Walls have crumpled into the road and entire blocks have been razed. Scraps of building point up like blackened broken teeth. One mound of rubble is mixed with twisted metal. A plane? A Satellite? Something hurled down from the sky. Everywhere the trees are unruly, their branches grown too low, too wide, freed and controlled no more. Grass sprays up between the paving slabs. Down here on the ground, away from the super-loads, everywhere Tom looks lie bones. Some still snag tendrils of fabric, or maybe it’s matter, but most are sun-stripped clean. Sometimes there are recognisable configurations: two attaching at a knee; a ribcage like a spider; vertebrae with the jawbone attached. Pieces of people discarded like toys.”

https://more2read.com/review/the-feed-by-nick-clark-windo/

[Evelina | AvalinahsBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Feed is a solid, well-written, but pretty traditional dystopian novel. Definitely recommended for dystopia fans! I expected something more ground-breaking from it, and maybe more powerful or adventure driven, but it's more of a slice-of-life. However, I enjoyed this book, and I'll try to give you my reasons why. Read the full review here on the blog.


The Pace

While I enjoyed The Feed, my biggest problem was with the pace. Things didn't really take off up till maybe 70% into the book, and I still wasn't sure what I'm reading here – I mean, atmospheric tales are okay, I guess it's more about the fact that I don't read a lot of dystopias – so if I'm reading one, I'm expecting something to happen. It did, eventually, but in my opinion, it took too long.


The Plot

Once the plot got moving, I appreciated its originality and the idea it is based on. It really is a good plot! Unline many other dystopian novels, this one is not based on constant violence and terror. Yes, there is violence, but the book really isn't about that. In between short spurts of 'happenings', it's more of a study of the characters' inner realms, their feelings and wonderings. The main plot revolves about trying to find out what is happening to the people whose brains get 'hacked'. Although this plot line isn't so apparent till later in the book. I can't give away too much, obviously for fear of spoilers, but I believe the story was uncovered in a nice way, and the whole setup was also smart and interesting. I was also deeply satisfied with the ending.


The Characters

I really enjoyed the characters! They are written truly well, and you can tell them apart well – even when they inhabit the same body. The drama they are living through – lost children, not knowing what happened to your remote family, not having enough to eat or even knowledge to grow or forage for food – it's all very realistic and well done. I enjoyed the slice-of-life part of The Feed.


The Triggers

Should I have to warn you about triggers in a dystopian novel..? Anything dystopian is bound to have scores of triggers. Although I find that this book is much less graphic than the rest, there is still violence, although most of it is perceived rather than described. Yes, you might get sad reading this book – it's our possible future. And it's a sad one. I believe that is meant to get us to think about what we're doing to the world.


Overall...

The Feed is a good book for the lover of slower, psychological dystopia – one that is not based on supernatural happenings or constant movement and adventure. It's a study of a person's feelings when something like this happens, and it's also a study of the direction our world might be taking. Despite being somewhat slow paced, it has a very satisfying ending and poses a lot of good questions to ponder about.


Other Books You Might Like

I feel like this book is a lot like Station Eleven, which was also a sort of intellectualist-dystopia, although possibly more high-brow than The Feed. The pace and feel is quite similar though, so if you enjoyed it, I think you will enjoy The Feed as well. Children of the Different is also a similar story, but in a different way than Station Eleven . It focuses more on movement, pace and adventure, but somehow, the feel is quite similar.



I thank William Morrow for giving me a free copy of the book in exchange to my honest opinion.

Read Post On My Blog | My Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be really dull. The characters are 2D and very dislikable. The story although interesting is a little ridiculous. I would have liked to learn more about the feed and how it came into existence as I think that was a really interesting aspect that should have been developed more. For me the book just didn't live up to its expectations. 

Read more of this review on my blog at: https://bookgeek2015.wordpress.com/

[Karen’s Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the concept was interesting, I had a hard time with the writing style. From paragraph to paragraph, the story would jump from present to past, or thinking about the past, or reliving the past... There were many times I wasn't sure what was going on.

The ending was "interesting". I did find the last parts easier to read as the story didn't jump around as much.

[The Tattooed Book Geek (Drew). · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always this review can also be found on my blog The Tattooed Book Geek: https://thetattooedbookgeek.wordpress...

I received a free copy of this book courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Feed starts with a prologue set before the collapse and focuses on Tom and Kate, the two main characters. Tom and Kate are going ‘slow‘ completely disconnected from the Feed, talking in the real, which doesn’t happen when you are connected to the Feed as it is that immersive, your whole life plugged in to and controlled by the Feed. It’s an innocuous beginning with Tom and Kate who are a married couple and who are just trying to spend some quality time together. Until the Feed is hacked and then something catastrophic happens that sets in motion the collapse of the Feed and subsequently, society on a whole.

After the prologue, we jump forward 6 years and it’s about survival and coping in the aftermath of the collapse. Kate and Tom, their child, Bea, Graham and Jane who never had the Feed (they were resistors), Sean, Jack (Sean’s son) and Danny make up the group at the beginning. It’s a small community akin to a farming community, foraging, trying to grow crops and generally, keeping a low profile and getting by in the best way that they can. With the loss of knowledge and machinery, the way of life and living has reverted back to a more basic level. Food and resources are dwindling and it’s a daily struggle to survive.

The Feed was all-encompassing and then it was gone, it was like an addiction, constantly streaming everything, all the time and now 6 years later, after it’s gone, people still suffer from Feed reflexes. When they try to remember things they inadvertently try to access memories, strands and streams from the Feed and they can’t, there’s nothing there, just an empty void and this causes them to start fitting, withdrawal symptoms from Feed addiction. At the start of the collapse, Feed reflexes were the cause of most people’s deaths as they couldn’t connect to the Feed. Where before they had a whole virtual world there was now nothing, they became lost in an oblivion of emptiness, the Feed reflexes took over as the synapses tried to connect over and over and over failing each time and they just didn’t know how to function like people in the real world.

Sleep is the major danger for our cast of characters and you have to be watched by someone else when you sleep in case you are taken. Being ‘taken‘ means that your body is taken over and is the main factor that helped bring about the collapse of the Feed network and society. It happens quickly, in a matter of seconds, you start twitching in your sleep and then you are no longer you. You will look and sound the same but the person inside won’t be you, another will be tethered to you, your memories, what makes you, you, all gone and replaced with someone else. You have to be watched while you sleep otherwise how would the people around you know that when you awake, you are still you, they wouldn’t and then, they wouldn’t be able to trust you. There is no cure or remedy to being taken and the only solution is to kill the taken person before they become a danger and a threat.

Everything was on the Feed, everything that made you, you. Your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your memories and you could even back-up your brain. The Feed took over from reality, you didn’t need to learn anything in the real world as you had the virtual world at the tip of your fingers. You could access the required information on the Feed in the blink of an eye, as soon as you thought it, the information that you wanted would be there right before you. Due to this, when the Feed went down a vast swathe of irreplaceable knowledge and information was lost.

The first part of the Feed is quite slow, there’s a couple of action-orientated moments but on the whole, the beginning is rather sedated and measured and it takes over a hundred pages for Bea to finally be abducted. The slower pacing feels right for that first part of the story though and it works extremely well. It’s measured but at the same time engaging and it gives Windo the chance to ramp up the tension, explain the danger of sleep and being taken, build the world and allow you, as the reader a chance to become acquainted with the characters that he has created.

After Bea has been abducted the pacing picks up. There’s lots of walking in the Feed, the book is a journey as Tom and Kate search for Bea. It’s a journey filled with twists, turns and revelations. Some you will see coming and others will blindside you.

There’s only so much that you can do with a post-apocalyptic setting, after all, it’s a world gone to ruin. But, in The Feed, Windo has created an atmospheric, desolate and brutal world. The remnants of the past are vividly realised, it’s a bleak, barren and dangerous post-feed world that the characters now inhabit and it comes alive thanks to Windo’s descriptive prose. The imagery and the way that the world and the various landscapes are described by Windo, the overgrown flora, lush vegetation, small settlements, dilapidated and crumbling buildings and the destroyed cityscape reminded me of The Last of Us video game (it’s a fantastic game, one of the best from the last generation so, if you’re not a gamer, please know, it’s a great comparison for me to make).

The idea and premise behind the Feed are really interesting and it does make you think about and question our reliance, no matter how small on social media and our own personal feeds (anyone on Twitter, Facebook or any other social media already has a feed) in today’s digital age. As technology continues to advance you can predict that our dependence on both it and the required connectivity will only continue to grow as it spreads into every facet of our daily lives and due to this, I found the concept of the Feed to be very plausible for our future.

I mentioned earlier in the review about being ‘taken‘ while you sleep. I’m not going to go into any overt detail and spoil the story but the introduction of Sylene as a character later in the book works really well as the catalyst to learn more about where the taken come from. When the reveal happens and the truth behind who is responsible for ‘taking‘ people is finally revealed you can understand the motivation and the reason why and it adds a whole extra dimension to the story being told.

The Feed doesn’t feature a vast ensemble cast of characters and the main focus is on Tom, Kate and later on, Sylene too. There are a few secondary characters added to the mix too who all, no matter how briefly they appear have a role to play, are well developed and more importantly they add something to the overall story.

When you have a book that is about surviving whatever life throws at you and enduring hardship, you need to feel something for the characters involved. You also need to factor in that Tom and Kate are parents searching for their abducted child and if you feel nothing for them then you won’t care about the outcome, you won’t care if one of them is taken, you won’t care if they find Bea and you won’t care if one or both of them dies. Luckily, Windo makes you care about Tom and Kate and they aren’t just names on a page, their grief is believable, you want them to overcome the obstacles and predicaments that they find themselves in on the search and more than anything you will find yourself willing them along on their journey as you want them to find Bea.

I really thought that the ending of The Feed was outstanding. Sometimes books just seem to fizzle out as though the author doesn’t know how to end their work. There’s no such issue like that with The Feed and while it’s only my personal opinion, I found the ending to be everything I could have asked for and more. It’s the type of conclusion where you turn the final page, put the book down and think to yourself ‘damn, I wasn’t expecting that but damn, that was good‘.

The Feed is a top draw and addictive read that deserves to be a hit. It’s a harrowing tale, at times moving, at times thoughtful and at times harsh. It will keep you coming back for more with characters that feel real and whose fate you care about, a vivid landscape and stellar thought-provoking story it is a compelling page-turner.

The Feed is a welcome and worthy addition to the genre and anyone that enjoys post-apocalyptic fiction will find a lot to like in Windo’s accomplished debut work.

Simply put, I loved this book.

[Marcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit was een heel bijzonder boek. Wat gebeurt er als (een vergevorderde / futuristische versie van) sociale media opeens uit de wereld verdwijnt? Als de mens terug op haar instinct moet vertrouwen?
The Feed was geen gemakkelijk boek om te lezen, voornamelijk door het gebrek aan hoofdstukken. Daarnaast duurt het een tijdje voordat de post-apocalyptische setting wordt toegelicht. Maar dan gebeuren er opeens heel spannende en onverwachte dingen. Rond pagina 190 was ik echt even in shock. Ook het einde is zeer sterk. Dit boek is zo’n mindfuck en tegelijkertijd heel actueel. Je moet even doorzetten aan het begin, maar dan staat je een hele bijzondere leeservaring te wachten.
Mijn complete recensie lees je op Oog op de Toekomst.

[Chloe Neumeister · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea for this book is a great one and it really intrigued me when I read the synopsis, however I did not enjoy this book! It is an extremely slow read and never really gets anywhere, it is long, drawn out and not worth your time if I'm honest! I won't say what the book is about in case you want to read it but The Feed is not a recommended read for me!

[Loring Wirbel · Rating 4 out of 5]

So anyone who thought Tyrell Johnson had to dodge many Cormac McCarthy comparisons along the denuded road of his early 2018 novel The Wolves of Winter, had better be prepared for Nick Clark Windo's artful minefield dance and dodge in The Feed. This book is almost an exercise in 21st-century cliches - a decimated post-apocalypse landscape, social media gone wild to an extent we can scarcely imagine, and the true endgame for climate change centuries from now. Seeing as how this is Windo's debut novel, I fully expected one of these mines to explode in his face. Somehow, though, The Feed works well, though I'd still tell the person writing back-cover blurbs that this is much more of a sociological speculative fiction study or modernist sci-fi spinoff than a "thriller."

Before I nitpick about elements of the story that did not quite coalesce, let me congratulate Windo on his creation of a world. Sure, the minimalist survivalist camps springing up after electrical grids and communication networks break down bring to mind similar camps from McCarthy, Johnson, and dozens of other writers, but Windo is wise to focus on the ad-hoc nature of the efforts, where many DIY attempts do not work, and humans struggle to simply carry on day to day. The foot travel over long distances reinforces the vision of a very small human on an expansive planet, but because the backdrop is upstate New York rather than the Yukon, the landscape is not as bleak as that of The Wolves of Winter -- though equally depopulated of humans. Other species, however, seem to be making more of an effort of taking back the Earth in Windo's novel than in Johnson's.

The oversharing we already experience in traditional social media networks is hyper-exaggerated here, as people share direct brain-states and histories through the exchange of "mundles" or memory-bundles. The preservation of entire human personalities to achieve a sort of immortality hints at Cory Doctorow's 2017 novel Walkaway. Both Windo and Doctorow are vague on the specifics, Windo even more so than Doctorow, but the intent of both authors seems to be to allow the reader to come to individual conclusions of how humans would be represented by the sum total of their mental states.

The supporting actors in this novel are given a partial fleshing out, but the bulk of the story centers on Tom Hatfield, whose character is somewhat brought to life, but particularly on the individual who may be Kate Hatfield or Silene Charles. Windo is compassionate in developing the survival strategies of the two-women-in-one, though it is evident that he wants to reinforce the idea that anger and revenge as motivating forces will never take you where you want to go. Charles and her compatriots among the futurist "takers" may have plenty of reasons to be furious at the abusive caretakers of the planet, but one would think that they would listen to the many-worlds physics-philosophers' warnings that the past can never be changed without spawning many unwanted worlds in its wake. And, in a caution most relevant for Charles' sons, that a turn to assassination and random terror will only destroy the perpetrator as well as the population of souls surrounding the victim -- or, as Lao Tzu would say in the Tao Te Ching, "There is always an official executioner. If you try to take his place, it is trying to be like a master carpenter and cutting wood. If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your own hand."

It might be a little unfair to point out Windo's areas of implausibility, as many writers of more far-out sci-fi and fantasy make implausibility a selling point. But since Windo is writing a speculative fiction closer to lives actually lived, I will bring up two points that bugged me, and other readers might find additional ones. First of all, humans experiencing our limited forms of social-network sharing already are getting burned out, and people are leaving Facebook and Twitter in droves. I find it hard to believe that the fascination with The Feed would be so universal and absolute. Tom's father may have been a scoundrel, but there were no dictators trying to force people to try embedded and then genetically-adaptive mind-sharing tools. It seems as though "The Resisters" represented by Graham and Jane might well represent the majority of humans instead of a small minority of curmudgeons. Yes, The Feed is presented to the advertising-addled consumer as "candy everybody wants," but we are already a jaded enough species that I don't think that many people would be falling for the bait.

Second, when we consider that the timeline of the main part of the book covers a mere dozen years, I have trouble believing the devastation would be as absolute as Windo suggests. Now, general nuclear war or a series of related global hyper-natural-disasters could wipe out the bulk of the human race in days, weeks, or months. But Windo is describing a series of localized, cascading disasters, capped by the death of The Feed and augmented by carefully-targeted terrorist actions. This could make global systems collapse pretty effectively, to be sure, but would all cities be purged of human populations in the timeframe of the book's initial six years? That seems unlikely.

Some might find the linguistic tricks played to represent the racing of Kate's mind to be a typography formatting gimmick, but I have no problem with such gimmicks. Reading books by authors like Mark Z. Danielewski can be fun, and Windo only employs these techniques in a deft and minimal manner. The book's climax in The Tower, formerly home to Tom's parents, seems a bit overblown and melodramatic, yet Silene's/Kate's interpretation of the world and the decisions she makes to maximize a salvageable life give the novel a decent ending.

The expansion of apocalyptic music and literature began not long after the turn of the millenium, and it has moved into hyper-drive since the coming of the Trump administration. Windo gets a pass on this one, because he managed to make The Feed quite enjoyable in spite of itself. But I would encourage writers and musical lyricists to take to heart the warning that the post-apocalypse landscape has played itself out, and then some. Time to find a new playground.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf)]

No rating as DNF'd. The first chapter was excellent & I was invested in the coming storyline but when the timeline jumped ahead, the pacing slowed down too much & I just wasn't eager to pick it back up.

[Yzabel Ginsberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book beginning of March, I’ve just finished it now (mid-May)… I admit I had a very hard time staying focused and motivated to read it. Perhaps because of the absence of chapters (instead, we have scenes with breaks, and some of the scenes are pretty long), which was a bit of a turn-off for me.

The story has good themes: survival; the world as we know it ending; a technology (the Feed) both exciting and creepy; people trying to live in a community of their own after the fall; children getting abducted; and a mystery, a.k.a people being ‘taken’ in their sleep, effectively losing themselves and becoming someone else. And I admit that -this- part was fairly intriguing and interesting… once the book gets to it, that is, not before the 50% mark or so.

However, it just didn’t grab me; the plot was sort of meandering, with the effect that I was very much aware that there was a plot, and of what it was, yet it felt like there was no plot. I don’t even know how that could happen. I also didn’t connect with the characters, except one (and, here too, we don’t see this character until mid-book). Even writing a review about it kind of bores me.

The writing itself was fine, although the parts in ‘Feed-speak’ were headache-inducing, to be honest.

[Melki]

At almost the halfway point, I can't believe I'm throwing in the towel, but I really can't stand this book another minute. These characters? Oy, I don't care what happens to any of them. The writing is bad. The author is lousy at description; he does not help me to visualize this landscape. And, the dialogue? Clunkety, clunk, clunk.

As I didn't finish, I won't assign a star rating, but I am sorely tempted to crate a good-premise-wasted shelf just so I can put this book on it.

[Liz Barnsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One sitting (almost) read, I devoured this story barely putting it down. Great concept, great execution, plenty of book trauma with a huge emotional rush of an ending. Left me vaguely tearful.

Will be teaser reviewed during my "Ones to Watch in 2018" feature running at the moment. But DAMN what a rush.

Wider review will also follow near publication.

[Kate]

I've tried reading this twice now but again, and for the last time, had to admit defeat, abandoning it at p.79. The premise is too unbelievable and implausible, the characters too difficult to care about.

[Emmy Hermina Nathasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't say that its weird, but its definitely intriguing.

Kinda like the same feeling I get when I read Station Eleven. The flow of the story is rather mundane, but in an interesting way. It was the element of surprise that keeps on unravelling slowly, that pushes me to keep on reading.

[Sky Rose Reviews · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: I hated this book and I will not be pulling punches. I’ve looked at other reviews and I don’t get it, man. I just don’t get it. I couldn’t even finish the damn thing it sucks that hard.

As you might have guessed I’m going to be writing this very freeform, kind of like I was speaking to you in person. That is partly because this is a stream-of-consciousness rant, and partly because that’s how the whole god damn book feels.

My main issues with The Feed are twofold. Firstly, it is so painfully obvious that Nick Clark Windo wanted to write a screenplay for a TV show, probably a BBC 6 episode miniseries (I mean the thing reads like he’d only just finished reading the 2007 remake of Survivors), and boy oh boy does it come through in his writing style. Here’s the thing about writing dialogue and action in novels – you write it like it’s a fucking novel, because that’s what it is. What you don’t do, is include passages like, and I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to pick the thing up again, “ ‘How are we going to explain all of…’ the dumbass character I don’t remember the name of gestured vaguely to the interior and exterior of the building, indicating the new world’ ”. Now see, that works just fine in a screenplay. In a novel? It’s jarring and awkward. Some people may well disagree with me and say that it makes it more realistic, but I think it’s bad writing.

Secondly, the setting itself. Now, I have a background in bioscience, so I’m admittedly nitpicky when it comes to science fiction, but I try to encourage the suspension of disbelief in myself where possible. This being said, the whole premise of the Feed itself just makes no god damn sense to me. There’s a scene in the first chapter (Which, by the way, was from a different person’s point of view to the rest of the book – why? Like it’s not like that character disappeared or died or anything, she’s still there, just… relegated to side character) where she is trying not access the Feed, but does so. It describes all the things she’s able to do with it (generic social media stuff since the whole feel of the book can be summed up by that picture of a guy wearing a shirt saying “durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and Thomas Edison was a witch”), and mentions that she did all that in like 11 milliseconds before switching it off again so her husband or fiancée or boyfriend or whoever he was doesn’t notice. First off – no, you can’t do all that. I don’t give a flying one how good the technology is, the human brain cannot process that amount of different information at that speed. No, not even with incredibly advanced technology, not going to happen, it’s dumb.

Second of all, he then notices and berates her (of course). Using the Feed is described as making you slackjawed, rapid eye movements, phased out, all that typical “why is this generation constantly on their phones” bullshit – however, 11 milliseconds is not long enough to notice. MAYBE I can accept that if you were living with that technology present in all aspects of daily life you’d pick up on the cues of it a lot quicker, but… come on.

My next big gripe with this book is how vague it was. When a writer does the irritating “six years later…” thing after the first chapter, a lot will have changed, and so they make allusions to those things and slowly make reference to them. That being said, the author reeeally wanted to keep his cards close to his damn chest with this stuff. He was trying to be all vague and mysterious, oooh what could be happening, what are they all so afraid of, which would be fine if he handled it well. He didn’t. There were ample opportunities to explain what was going on – hell he’d set it up perfectly for the main character to explain to his child what was happening in a natural conversation, but apparently flashbacks are better. See what I mean about wanting to write a screenplay?

I’m going to be honest, maybe the book gets a lot better. Maybe it draws you in later on. But I read through a decent portion of it and I had less than 0 interest in finding out any more. I had much more interest in coming to my computer, which will probably make my brain rot and my eyes fall out if Nick Clark Windo has anything to say about it, and writing this review in one shot.

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm being charitable. It was a three-star book for the second half of this story, and no higher than a 1.5 for the first *150 pages.* Ultimately, since it ended better than it began, I'm going with the higher rating instead of the average of those two ratings (2.25 to be technical). Bottom line: this book felt like two different books between the first half and the second, and it's likely that if you enjoy one you won't much like the other. Either way, this book is less about the technology of "the Feed" (which was a bit surprising, given how much that aspect is forefront in the summary) and more about questioning the nature of identity, humanity and relationships.

So: the first half of this book is basically a survivalist tale. Kate and her husband Tom are in a small settlement, apparently six years after the Feed went down and took most of society with it, and they have a small daughter, Bea. Their relationship is strained; Kate wants to leave and Tom is reluctant. Also, the settlement is also being plagued by people being "taken" - apparently as you sleep anyone can be vulnerable to habitation by dangerous unknown creatures, which requires those around to kill whoever they see taken this way.

Windo throws you into all this as the book begins without much explanation, and his writing style does whatever the opposite of "infodumps" is. I respect the attempt to minimize exposition, but I spent a lot of the beginning of this book going, "Wha?" and puzzling over seemingly random pieces of information that didn't connect. And very shortly the intriguing mystery of being "taken" while sleeping is shoved aside for a more concrete version of being "taken": Bea is abducted during a raid on the settlement, and Tom and Kate leave to go after her.

Let me just say I totally hated Tom and Kate's relationship in the first half of the book, and basically also them as characters. Tom seemed frenetic and selfish, and Kate overly anxious and weirdly withholding from Tom. They did things that seemed nonsensical; I could hardly understand them as individuals, let alone as a couple. Their pursuit of Bea seemed aimless and a weak excuse to get Tom and Kate out in the world so we as readers could see all the weird f*cked up stuff going on out there. It was such a struggle to read the first ~150 pages of this novel.

Then there's a HUGE twist about halfway through the book, which I did not really see coming and fundamentally changes the story. For me, the first half took days and days to slog through; I read the second half in one night. Which still doesn't mean I thought it was totally successful: all of a sudden, we're in deep plot-thickening territory, and there are a lot of threads coming together and I don't think all of them quite tied up, but dang, at least it was interesting. The nature of the relationship between Kate and Tom changes deeply as well, and the question of whether or not they're going to stay together takes on an entirely different tone. The outcome around that at the end worked for me, but I can easily see others not being as satisfied with it, or the resolution about what happened with Bea.

There's a lot that Windo tried to accomplish in this book, and he succeeds at least at some of it. I'll give him points for pulling a decent story out of something I was fairly sure was going to be a boring waste of time. But ultimately my feeling around this book is kinda cheated - I wish he would have picked the storyline in the second half of the book and built more steadily and obviously toward it in the first half. I would have enjoyed that book more.

By the way, if you want a really amazing book that delves far more into the idea of "feed" type technology directly wired into people's brains and what it means to live without it, I definitely recommend Feed by MT Anderson. It's technically YA but I read it YEARS ago and it's so haunting it has stayed with me. Although The Feed has its charms, ultimately if I had to pick between the two, I'd chose Anderson's.