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Chimera
Unavailable
Chimera
Unavailable
Chimera
Audiobook15 hours

Chimera

Written by Mira Grant

Narrated by Christine Lakin

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

The final book in Mira Grant's terrifying Parasitology trilogy.
The outbreak has spread, tearing apart the foundations of society, as implanted tapeworms have turned their human hosts into a seemingly mindless mob.
Sal and her family are trapped between bad and worse, and must find a way to compromise between the two sides of their nature before the battle becomes large enough to destroy humanity, and everything that humanity has built...including the chimera.
The broken doors are closing. Can Sal make it home?

Parasitology Parasite Symbiont Chimera
For more from Mira Grant, check out:
Newsflesh Feed Deadline Blackout
Newsflesh Short Fiction Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box Countdown San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 24, 2015
ISBN9781478960478
Unavailable
Chimera
Author

Mira Grant

Mira Grant is the author of the New York Times best-selling Newsflesh trilogy, along with multiple other works of biomedical science fiction. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award, and her book, Feed, was chosen as one of NPR's 100 Killer Thrillers.

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Reviews for Chimera

Rating: 3.7580645161290325 out of 5 stars
4/5

93 ratings7 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was really looking forward to reading this last book of the trilogy, but I will admit to some disappointment. I could not get engaged into the story until half way through. I feel like the first half of the book could have been condensed into one chapter and gotten its point across. That being said, Sal goes through quite a bit of back and forth with her 'father' throughout the book and she gets to say her piece about how she deserves to live just as much as his precious Sally did. At times the story was like a larger commentary on our current society, ie: human vs chimera; US citizens vs immigrants; religions vs religions, etc... Can we have tolerance and peaceful cohabitation? Or that is just my Social Work degree coming out in me. The ending is appropriate to the series. Thank you to the author for the ride.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sal is trapped at USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases) where her father is convinced that Sal will help them cure her comatose sister and consent to having the tapeworm in her brain removed. He is still under the delusion that Sally can somehow still come. Sal keeps this hope alive because it's the only way she can keep existing for the moment. Meanwhile, Dr. Cale is trying to find a solution for all the tapeworm eggs living in the tap water and Sherman, the man who put them there, is lamenting the effect of what he's done. The tapeworm eggs effect everyone: chimera, human, and sleepwalker alike. It's simply acting as a poison except for the lucky very few who become chimera. Will Sherman succeed in replacing the human race? What will happen to Sal and her family?Chimera is the last book in the Parasitology series and picks up right where the last one left off. Sal has gone through quite the transformation over all of the books. Now, Sal is solid in her understanding of and confidence in herself as a chimera. The beginning of the book has Sal trapped in a refugee camp with the general populace, crowded with at least ten people in each room. She goes through a period of depression, where she just languishes and doesn't do much. Then she realizes that she's gotten out of worse and formulates a plan to get out. It's a crazy, not very well thought out plan, but it works. Sal plays on people's assumptions of her and puts on different personas when necessary to make them underestimate her, using half truths and rationalizations to give her performance more veracity. No one can shake Sal's understanding of herself and it's her biggest strength. Everything she does is for the benefit of her family. She deeply cares for humans, chimera, and sleepwalkers alike, but when the priorities get right down to it, she isn't afraid to hurt or stop whoever is hurting those closest to her. Sal's compassion impressed me. It's hard to feel that for people who aren't sentient or aware, but she recognizes their relation to her and ultimately wishes they could be left alone. I like her ability to feel yet she doesn't let it compromise the safety of those around her.All the characters add to the world and bring along their own flaws and rationales. Fishy, for instance, is convinced he's living in a video game world, complete with cut scenes, restarts, player characters, and everything else. His delusion isn't as strong as it used be and the reality where his wife and child are dead shows through sometimes. Sherman is a classic abuser that blames all of his shortcomings and mistakes on his victims. Sal forced him to take samples from her and dump all the eggs into the water supply. It's not his fault that it didn't have the desired effect. He also has a completely different view of Sal, similar to how she was in the first book but weaker and more malleable. The few passages from his perspective were chilling. It fascinated me how his mental gymnastics justified his awful behavior. Although he hates the humans for mistreating chimera, he does the same thing to humans. In contrast, Sal's group for the most part has their own code of ethics that preserves both chimera and human life whenever possible.Juniper is a brand new character and chimera because she is the product of multiple worms invading and one coming out on top inside a small girl. The phenomenon is even rarer than the production of regular chimera. Sal immediately protects her and treats her like her child because that worm was created from Sal. Juniper doesn't have a huge role in the books and has to learn everything about being human, but Sal finally understands a mother's perspective. Her experience lets her understand Dr. Cale and Sally's mother better after experiencing the emotions and instincts involved. Dr. Cale is one of my favorite characters because she may be a woman and a mother, but emotions are very low on her list of motivators. She loves all of her children and she takes care of them, but logic and rationality are higher priorities to her. Her experience also pointed out sexism in her field like how she went into hiding because her male colleague lied and opposed her. Few would side with Dr. Cale if any, so she decided to take herself out of the equation instead. This installment gave me a much better understanding than before when she just seemed cold and callous.The plot twists and turns and I had no idea where it would end up. Some of it seemed a little convenient, but other things are our of Sal's control and don't go quite how she would like. It's a satisfying end to a unique series and doesn't seem too outlandish. I would love to see other stories set within the world. Mira Grant is the pen name of Seanan McGuire and I will read everything she writes. Her writing always sucks me into whatever world she made and keeps me there until I finish and crave the next book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Lacking in that Wow factor that Grant's initial series books can have this is still a very decent conclusion to the trilogy, everything explained, and everybody accounted for.There's not a vast amount of action - Sal does a great deal of running around between the camps - military, Sherman's chimeras and Shanti's scientists, all of which seem overly eager to accept her, and also overly easy to escape from. Along the way she finally comes to terms with what she is, and who she isn't. And hence who she does really care about, and the side she must choose to do everything she can to save. Enjoyable and interesting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The final book in the Parasitology is more of a getting the world to come to grips with the fact that the tapeworms are taking over people and a small percentage of them are actually able to integrate into the human brain and become a hybrid. Sal is constantly either on the run or trying to escape from one group to the next. As the first one that has had their tapeworm take over and become someone who can function in this new world she isn’t understood by most people. The book has a good ending but I struggled to get through it since there is no super happy ending more of a and now this is how we are going to live with the results of our actions as humans trying to cut corners in science.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think this series would make excellent movies! Creepy and good! I really don't want to drink water though
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Third and last in Grant’s Parasitology trilogy. We’ve moved past most of the zombie-like features here, because Sal spends most of her time dealing with humans or other chimeras like her, who’ve integrated their tapeworms with their human host bodies. Grant’s skills at generating dramatic situations are on display here, as are her most characteristic habits/flaws—particularly that all the characters sound basically the same and use a lot of repetitive sentence structures/repeated phrases. Plus everybody keeps quoting a made-up children’s book in ways that just got super annoying, enough so that I agreed with the bad guy’s mockery. Anyhow, civilization is in full collapse by this book, and Sal is trying to navigate among the US Army, the evil chimera who’s trying to replace humanity, and the research team (including her human lover) trying to find a way to allow humans and tapeworms to coexist. With a bit of lampshading of her improbable importance, Sal does her best to protect her chimerical family.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was an excellent end to a fantastic series. If you enjoy sci-fi with a medical focus (as these books are all about parasites humans tailored to take care of their bodies and administer medication, taking over their hosts) I highly recommend the series! It's fast-paced without being too overwhelming, the characters are convincing and for a layman like myself, the science was believable. I hated to put this book down and yet, I never wanted the series to end. Grant did a wonderful job of grossing me out and giving me feels and keeping me engrossed up to the very last page!