Review: Kingdom of Needle and Bone

Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

4.5 Stars

Mira Grant, aka Seanan McGuire loves a good biological horror story. And you don't need to look very far afield for sci-fi inspiration these days when you look at the current news with things like measles outbreaks surging in the face of anti-vaxxer madness. Writing on a topic in which she excels- the non-selective brutality of viruses and potential for disastrous mistakes with genetic engineering- McGuire envisions a world in which herd immunity to measles has broken down because there is no longer a protective veil of a substantial vaccinated population. It is a world which the death toll from a new strain of a virus similar to measles dwarfs that of the Spanish Flu of 1918. But what if such a virus also damaged your immune system's ability to form new immune reactions to other diseases? From a scientific standpoint it's not too far a stretch, and from a social/public health standpoint, you're talking about the potential to wipe out wide swaths of the earth's population. Isolating the uninfected seems likely to be the only way to secure the species' future.

While this book, to some extent, covers conceptual terrain that McGuire/Grant has previously covered in her Newsflesh series, Kingdom of Needle and Bone makes a marked departure from her previous works in terms of it's overtly political stance and its crystal clear thoughts on things like social welfare (greater common good) and reproductive choice. Longtime readers of McGuire will not be particularly surprised.

This is a very important topic, swathed in the velvet of fiction. It's a bold stance in that many in the sciences will applaud.

I'll be discussing this book on the blog with Alex and Janelle. KIngdom of Needle and Bone releases on Monday, December 31st.

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