I received an ebook copy of thisnovella from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
“Those old diseases can’t have been so bad, people say, or we wouldn’t be here to talk about them. They don’t matter. They’re never coming back.
How wrong we could be.”
Exactly how wrong we can be – as a species, collectively and individually – is at the heart of this medical horror novella by Mira Grant. I’m new to both medical horror and Mira Grant’s work, but after this one, I think I’m hooked on both.
The story follows the aftermath of Morris’ disease, a mutated form of measles with a higher-than-usual fatality rate and devastating consequences for the survivors. Dr. Isabella Gauley, a pediatrician whose niece is the unfortunate patient zero, faces ethical and legal quandaries left and right as she tries to continue her work in the aftermath. Whether she successfully threads the needle of wrong, right, and human is up to the perspective of the reader.
I spent a lot of time as a kid reading and re-reading Michael Crichton novels, so when I say this story reminded me of Crichton at his best (with a heaping helping of additional emotional nuance), it is a high compliment. Grant has the same knack for building tension through prose that seems, on the micro level, nothing more than a dry recitation of facts – the number of kids on Lisa’s bus, how many times she sneezed while riding it, etc. Individually, the facts mean little, but the macro picture they develop is horrifying. The science is grounded and plausible, even if I did have to Google to convince myself that measles really does give your immune system a kind of amnesia (it does, it’s terrifying, please keep up with your vaccines).
The pacing felt a little off, to me, but as an inexperienced horror reader, I’m not sure how much of that is my unfamiliarity with the conventions of the genre. The character development is not as full as I would generally like, but it’s a novella and space is limited. The development that is present is efficient and varied enough to satisfy me.
All told, I would recommend this novella to anyone curious about Mira Grant, medical horror, or just what the anti-vax movement might earn us in the near future.
(Are your vaccines up to date? Are you sure?)
Rating: 4.5/5
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