Kingdom of Needle and Bone
Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant Subterranean Press Sci Fi & Fantasy Pub Date 31 Dec 2018
Review
Mira Grant’s newest novel is a chilling vision of the near future, all the more frightening because of its possibility. Already we see the impact of the anti vaccination groups as polio and other diseases long eliminated return in virulent form. We wonder what comes next. Mira Grant gives an answer in the form of a question - what if herd immunity was fractured enough to allow a new form of an old disease to infect most of the population, and what if that disease prevented the infected from developing new antibodies. How do you protect the healthy? How do you save the sick? Naturally there are additional twists, but Mira Grant paints a picture both eminently possible and painful to see. I was captivated from beginning to end.
Kingdom of Needle and Bone is an excellent piece of near future speculative fiction. It is worth reading for many reasons, not the least of which is the importance of the vaccination issue. I highly recommend Mira Grant’s newest novel.
5 / 5
I received a copy of Kingdom of Needle and Bone from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.
— Crittermom
Description
We live in an age of wonders. Modern medicine has conquered or contained many of the diseases that used to carry children away before their time, reducing mortality and improving health. Vaccination and treatment are widely available, not held in reserve for the chosen few. There are still monsters left to fight, but the old ones, the simple ones, trouble us no more. Or so we thought. For with the reduction in danger comes the erosion of memory, as pandemics fade from memory into story into fairy tale. 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. It begins with a fever. By the time the spots appear, it’s too late: Morris’s disease is loose on the world, and the bodies of the dead begin to pile high in the streets. When its terrible side consequences for the survivors become clear, something must be done, or the dying will never stop. For Dr. Isabella Gauley, whose niece was the first confirmed victim, the route forward is neither clear nor strictly ethical, but it may be the only way to save a world already in crisis. It may be the only way to atone for her part in everything that’s happened. She will never be forgiven, not by herself, and not by anyone else. But she can, perhaps, do the right thing. We live in an age of monsters.
