Heh. P-C and I were secretly squeeing about that pretty much the entire time between when Seanan said yes and the moment it arrived at your doorstep. I still wish it came with a magic Fix-Ginger's-Everything spell, but distraction was the best we could do.

Polter-Cow and Seanan McGuire got me an early copy, which did indeed distract me from my current troubles.

Aww, yay! You deserve some good things.

I didn't notice any extra hyphens. I'm a hyphenating kind of girl, though.

Some discussion:

I really enjoyed it, and she's mastered that skill of making you turn the page. I still don't entirely buy the cloning thing. If we go with the mechanism being related to the way the virus reboots, it opens a huge can of worms, because wouldn't wealthy people keep spare clones and have some 24/7 service ready to suck their brain if they zombify? Also, if the immunity can transfer from a person with a reservoir condition, why isn't a vaccine possible?

The biggest problem was it wrapped up too fast, without giving us any sense of why so many CDC people would go along with this. I can't see a lust for power motivating that many of them. I would have liked to have heard more from CDC people who were convinced that the only way for the human race to survive was to convince everyone that the virus was always lethal. Couldn't they do that by lying, rather than making it universally lethal? Instead, we get a one-dimensional villain giving a "because we can" speech.

As an aside, the reason plutonium was dubbed the most lethal substance on earth was because they couldn't get the Navy guys in the first nuclear vessels to take invisible danger seriously. In fact, many, many things are more lethal.

eta: It really came at a time when the only thing that could have distracted me was a book of that turn-the-page caliber. Also, P-C, can you send me her address? I've been remiss in thanking her, but things have been kind of fuzzy in my brain.

Film RIGHTS!!!!

Oh, god, god, let them cast the right actors and director.

I have Blackout in my hot little hands, but can't read it till tonight, because I'm visiting a friend and my parents and will be DRIVING.

I CANNOT WAIT.

And that was a really nice thing you did for Ginger, guys!

I didn't notice any extra hyphens. I'm a hyphenating kind of girl, though.

Adverbs before adjectives don't need hyphens; they modify that adjective WITHOUT the help of punctuation, dammit! There was also a lot of yelling about semicolons. And the occasional content feedback. But mostly spelling and punctuation.

It really came at a time when the only thing that could have distracted me was a book of that turn-the-page caliber.

Aw, yay.

Also, P-C, can you send me her address? I've been remiss in thanking her, but things have been kind of fuzzy in my brain.

Insent.

With regards to your points: I think the cloning thing is crazy super expensive, and I don't think anyone outside the CDC knows about it, which is why the rich aren't just sitting around with new bodies ready to go. Obvs you have to handwave cloning in general, but my favorite thing about the way she handled it was that Georgia II was very clearly Georgia II. I liked the fact that she was Georgia and she wasn't; she had her identity as a clone.

I do agree about the wrap-up at the end, though. I'll see how I feel about it when I read it now, but it did go a little quickly, and it was hard to believe that the CDC (and the world in general) would go along with such atrocities. But I think it does also continue to tie in to the themes of fear as a method of control brought up in the first book. It's a devious, conniving, horrible plan, on a grand, global scale, and I do think that's cool, if, you know, terrible for humanity.

P.S. I yelled at her about Becks. Noooooooooo.

Hey, is Seanan pronounced like "Shannon"?

Nope, like "Shawn-un." Although I have another friend named Seanan who does pronounce it that way.

Thanks! I don't know why that wasn't obvious and also why it was sticking in my head so much.

NY Times on the quandary of stocking "50 Shades of Gray" in public libraries: [link]

Given that I found John Norman's Gor novels in the high school library, I suspect that there's plenty of erotica stocked in public libraries, it's just that librarians & politicians don't know about it...

A couple people on my facebook friends list are talking about ordering "that" book. They're too embarrassed to post about it by name, but I assume they were talking about 50 Shades of Grey.