Parasite

The idea of tapeworms being something people would ingest voluntarily ingest seems about as foreign a concept as teleporting or wormholes in space. Still, Ms. Grant does an excellent job in creating not only a possible scenario but also the marketing scheme behind the Intestinal Bodyguard. There is logic behind her world-building that removes some of the ick factor and rationalizes the concept of society accepting parasites as helpers. Still, the book is about something most people try to avoid at all costs and which can turn stomachs at the mere mention of them. As such, Parasite is simultaneously intriguing in its possibilities and horrific because of what it implies. Squeamish readers should approach with caution.

If one can get past show more the whole parasitic worm issue, the rest of the story is intense, fascinating, and still quite horrifying. Readers immediately bond with Sal, a woman who lost her entire life’s memories after a horrific accident, something from which she should have never recovered had it not been for her very own Intestinal Bodyguard. The action takes place six years after she wakes from her coma. She is still struggling to find her place in this unfamiliar world – a world in which her parents consider her a six-year-old trapped in the body of a twenty-something woman and more importantly a life about which she does not remember a single thing from before her accident. Her frustrations at the limitations imposed by both her parents and by SymboGen Corporation, who is funding all of her health care, at the limitations implied by her lack of memories, and at her desire for independence all create a very solid sympathetic link within the reader as one quickly realizes that she is stronger and more capable than anyone credits her for being.

Then there is her boyfriend. Dr. Nathan Kim is the foremost expert in parasitology, but it is obvious from the very start that his relationship with Sal has nothing to do with her unique situation and has everything to do with genuine love and affection. Theirs is a very special relationship, and their loving moments will make a reader’s heart ache with tenderness. Their strong bond is vital as the story progresses, balancing out the less positive relationships she has with others and a welcome oasis in a rather disgusting world.

The action starts out slowly but swiftly builds. As Sal learns whom to trust and whom to avoid, so does the reader, with many a twist and turn added to throw readers off the scent. There is a reveal at the end that is not altogether as shocking as one would expect it to be. Rather, it adds an entirely new twist to the series and sets the stage for an entirely new set of ethical questions. Ms. Grant’s use of science to explain the hows and whys of the Intestinal Bodyguard makes the science fiction portion of the story easy to understand and surprisingly believable. The ethical quandaries posed by SymboGen, the mysterious attacks and the whole parasitic bodyguard idea are enormous, especially given the fact that Ms. Grant has taken such care to establish a fully-developed world that appears reasonable.

Parasite means to shock, to disgust, to question, and to challenge. Sal is a fantastic character; her lack of memory allows her to approach the world from a very different angle, and she has the most wonderful tendency to whittle down scenes to their most essential parts, ignoring the emotional entanglement that causes others to act irrationally. She is a fierce girl when she needs to be and yet still incredibly fragile given everything she does not know. The moral and ethical dilemmas introduced by the answers she finds are extremely relevant and worth the time taken to at least think about them if not debate them with others. At times disgusting, always suspenseful, and utterly unique, Parasite gets under a reader’s skin and will make them question the true meaning of being human. show less

Mira Grant is the science fiction side of Seanan McGuire, the fantasy writer responsible for the OCTOBER DAYE and INCRYPTID fantasy series. Her last outing was the NEWSFLESH trilogy, which I loved (especially the first book, Feed). Now she’s published the first novel in the PARASITOLOGY duology, Parasite. And it’s a doozy.

Parasitology opens with the transcription of a video recording. Dr. Shanti Cale is speaking directly to the camera about her experiments with diphyllobothrium symbogenesis. We have no idea yet what this is, but we watch her inspect the intestine of a brain-dead human male, into which she implanted eggs of her living invention six days earlier. And sure enough, there are now living worms in the man’s show more intestine.
Eew, you say, and who can blame you? Why would anyone create a worm capable of living in the human gut? But this is one of the first stages in SymboGen’s development of a tapeworm that massively improves the life and health of all the human beings who choose to ingest a pill containing the worm, living in apparent symbiosis with the creature as it eliminates harmful germs, viruses and bacteria.

Here’s where the real science comes in. In Grant’s story, the tapeworm is the corporation’s answer to the hygiene hypothesis, first proposed in the late 1980’s. This hypothesis holds that more people are developing life-threatening allergies and autoimmune conditions because they aren’t getting enough exposure to infectious agents when they are children, thus not enabling their bodies to develop the means to fight them off. When every soap we use is an anti-bacterial soap, and everything we touch is sterilized to within an inch of its life before we use it; when peanuts are essentially banned in public places; when every animal we eat has been pumped full of antibiotics, thus pumping us full of antibiotics, our bodies no longer have any work to do, and therefore they don’t. Grant takes this hypothesis to what seems to be a logical conclusion: because we don’t have the proper antibodies, a mechanism like the tapeworm is necessary to protect human health.

We see the value of the organism in the next scene. Sally Mitchell is dying, slowly but surely, after having been rendered clinically brain dead in an automobile accident. Her doctor is pleading with her family to take her off life support, arguing that Sally is gone and isn’t coming back; if they take her off life support now, her organs can be used to help others to live. But even while the doctor is pleading his case, Sally wakes up. She has lost everything — her ability to speak, to walk, to read — but her life. And her personality has changed enormously. Indeed, she is now a much nicer person than the old Sally was, in just about every way. The only explanation is that the tapeworm inside her has somehow managed to repair the damage inflicted on her body, including her brain. SymboGen is taking credit for her recovery, in any event, and keeps close tabs on what is happening with Sally as she returns to her family and tries to start a new life. In fact, Sally is required to undergo psychotherapy and periodic intense medical testing to ensure that her health continues — and, presumably, to find out why her implant worked as it did.

But all is not well in the halls of SymboGen. For one thing, a sort of sleeping sickness has started up, apparently only in people with tapeworms; but somehow SymboGen has been able to keep this development out of the news. What’s up with SymboGen, anyway? And why are they keeping such close tabs on Sally, who, for all intents and purposes, appears to have fully recovered? And where does Sally’s boyfriend, who happens to be a parasitologist who has refused to swallow the pill that would give him a tapeworm, fit into things?

I love that Grant makes the most outlandish biological conditions sound absolutely reasonable. Her science is strong, and a good extrapolation from what we know in the present. I know some folks find the notion that anyone would voluntarily take a tapeworm into his or her body to be completely outlandish, but I also know plenty of people who wish they could have a tapeworm for just long enough to lose that last 10 pounds. How far from that idle wish is it to the acceptance of a medical treatment that keeps you healthy so long as you are in symbiosis with it? We all know that there are plenty of organisms that aren’t human already living in our bodies, so how big a step is it from that to accepting one that seems to be unambiguously beneficial? And how eager would a pharmaceutical company be to press such a “product” on a market at tremendous profit without quite making sure it’s completely safe over the long term?

Grant combines good scientific extrapolation with suspense so thoroughly that it’s hard to put this book down. Still, any reader paying attention is probably going to figure out what’s really behind Sally’s miraculous recovery fairly early on. But that isn’t the end of the story. You’ll finish Parasite eager for the next book.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/horrible-monday-parasite-by-mira-grant/ show less

If you haven’t grabbed a copy of Mira Grant’s Parasite, whether library, tree, or e-, do so! You’ll be in for a treat. Fast paced, with a concept that is close enough to a potential reality that the chill runs deep. The characters are well-fleshed out, many of them memorable, not always in a good way. The world building is good, and there are incisive reflections on just how badly we humans run societies in many respects. An underlying theme is what people in general will do for good health. As someone who deals with chronic pain, I might be one of those who would do something on the stupid side to be rid of it. This is the first book of what will be a trilogy, and I’m looking forward to the next installments.

You know, I was really enjoying this book up for the first half. I liked the characters and I thought the characterization of Sal's amnesia added to the plot rather than forcing the melodrama as amnesia often does. I was in for the medical explanations of the parasites and eager to see how everything goes terribly wrong (because it is obvious from chapter one that somehow everything is going to go terribly wrong).

But the book lost me almost exactly halfway through when Sal and Nathan meet Dr. Cale. The medicine becomes basically nonsensical magic, which particularly bothered me since previously it had been fine (and because scientific accuracy matters internally inside the story to the doctor characters). Nathan reacts in a bizarre way show more to a big reveal (which I predicted, and maybe he did too, but still! It is that big of a reveal about his own family!). Then some people are actually tapeworms controlling humans, and that's where I abandoned the book. I was in for the suspension of disbelief ride until then. But I couldn't anymore. show less

Have you read Parasite Rex? Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) has. And because she was reading it and found it interesting, I read it. Now that I've read the non-fiction book about parasites and Parasite all I can say is "thanks a lot for the nightmares, MG." Oh, but they're going to be delicious nightmares. Knowing a little about parasite behavior I was primed for this book, but not knowing won't make it any less horrifying for you once you figure out what's going on.

According to the hygiene hypothesis, the increase in autoimmune and allergic diseases is caused by the decrease in infections. In response to this, SymboGen genetically engineered a tapeworm to protect us from this, even to dispense the medications each individual might need. show more Just one pill every two years and you're cured. It's big business and big money, and it's the biggest health advance in ages. It might also be a miracle.

Sally Mitchell had a seizure while driving and suffered terrible injuries, including brain death. Just as her family was discussing ending her life support, Sally woke up. But she doesn't feel like Sally any more; after all the brain damage she might as well be a different person. Now Sal is part of the SymboGen family, proof of just what the intestinal implant can do.

The thing about parasites--that the SymboGen founders know and that Sal will find out--is that ultimately they want to survive and they're able to do incredible things to make that happen. Even manipulate and change their hosts.

Each chapter begins with excerpts from fictional books about SymboGen, its founders, the implant, and the advertising that got people to accept walking around with tapeworms living inside of them. It's one of those little touches Mira Grant does so well that makes the universe really come alive and it is fascinating.

(ARC provided by publisher) show less

Trite…Sophomoric…Lazy…with hints of adolescent pseudo-feminism.

Here we go again: a multi-billion dollar Big Pharma corporation has perverted science and is greedily cashing in on its defective product. I understand that Science Fiction is filled with cautionary tales of technology gone wild but, please, can’t we once in a while recognize the huge benefits scientific research has provided?
I have many criticisms of this novel. First of all, it is written in the style of a young adult novel. The heroine/narrator is constantly gabbing at the reader like a middle-schooler talking to her bestie. The dialogue feels like it was padded in as filler to make the story longer and the voices were indistinguishable; except for the father who show more came across as a stiff and wooden authority figure. There was zero suspense in the story. I will not go into spoilers but suffice to say by one quarter of the way through the book the reader is basically slogging their way through to the inevitable plot lines. Perhaps the story could have worked had it been told through the sister’s perspective. It is also very clear that the author had perhaps been on a tour of a pharmaceutical research facility: she obviously has no real idea how research works or how FDA review processes work. For a science fiction or medical thriller to really work it has to have some basis in reality. At least it has to seem plausible on some level. The ideas presented here are, in a word, crackpot. Finally: the coincidences. As I plodded through the story I found myself saying more and more “Oh, come ON!” From the inaction and ambivalence of authorities to the total cluelessness of the press and the media to the total corruption of a huge company and the naiveté or complicity of its employees, things just didn’t seem plausible. Not to mention the fact that a sophisticated research facility exists in secret in an abandoned bowling alley, it just too much. How did they get their MRI and who services it? Again, come ON!

On top of all this, after 500 pages we get a “to be continued”!?! Doesn’t anyone write stand-alone stories anymore?

Suffice to say, I will not be reading any more Mira Grant, though I have a couple of suggestions for her: Try working in a real lab for a while. It would do wonders for your background. And get rid of the cutesy picture attached to the bioblurb: really? Putting on lipstick in the reflection of a kitchen knife? show less

In Parasite by Mira Grant people are intentionally allowing parasites to be implanted in order to improve their health. Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

It is 2027. Sally (Sal) Mitchell survived a car crash six years ago and woke up in the hospital with no memories from her life before. Her miraculous survival and recovery is attributed to her SymboGen (www.symbogen.net) Intestinal Bodyguard. It's a tapeworm that has been genetically engineered to keep people free of diseases and other harmful medical conditions and parasites. While Sal lives with her parents and her sister, Joyce, she is essentially a totally different person from the Sally they knew before the accident. Her father, Colonel Alfred Mitchell, United States Army, is show more currently the director/lab manager of the USAMRIID San Francisco research center. His connections are why she had an early specialized version of the SymboGen implant.

Sal's boyfriend, Nathan Kim, is a parasitologist who refuses to have any Intestinal Bodyguard because he's not completely convinced they are without other side effects. Neither Sal nor Nathan trust SymboGen co-founder Dr. Steven Banks, but Sal is required to meet with him at the SymboGen research building when asked for tests so they can monitor her health and recovery. Everyone's doubts begin to increase ten-fold when weird sleep-walking people suddenly start showing up - and some of them are becoming aggressive.


The chapters open with excerpts of information that was taken from books or autobiographies - mainly from the trio of researchers who started SymboGen and explores their early experiments with tapeworms dating back to 2015. What is written stands out in sharp contrast, some of it cautionary, to the reality in 2027. And the direction the researchers are going all seems plausible today. Yes, of course, why not experiment with parasites and change them genetically so they will help you. What could possibly go wrong?

I really enjoyed this book. While I basically liked the first book in Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, I never went on to read the other books because I didn't really care if the zombies got them or not. This time around I have to hand it to Grant. I want to know what happens. I'm ticked off that after 500 pages the story is to be continued. I want to know more, darn it, and I want to know what happens next right now. Whew. Rant done.

As she delves into biomedical experimentation in Parasite, I would favorably compare Grant to Crichton in this case - with the exception of the ending. I do wish that the story had more closure and wasn't a too-be-continued.

The writing and pacing is excellent and the main characters are well developed. Grant does an incredible job playing on our desires for good health with little investment of time or labor to get that good health. Add that to the experimental genetic modifications being made to all sorts of plants and animals today and you could see this future happening.

For a horror novels, the details aren't terrible gruesome, but you have to prepare yourself for thinking about tapeworms and worms inside people, growing and living. That fact alone may be too much for some people.

Go to the website and watch the three SymboGen video. Think about health care for all. Consider: Good Health Starts Within.

This one is Very Highly Recommended.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Hachette Books via Netgalley for review purposes. show less