Cold Storage - David Koepp

   2019; 369 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Thriller; Cri-Fi; Horror.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    Forty years ago, Death fell from the sky and nobody realized it.  It was attached to the first US Space Station, “Skylab”, which, after its orbit decayed far enough, fell out of orbit and broke up over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.

 

    The piece carrying Death landed near the little town of Kiwirrkurra (a real place!  Wiki it.), where it remained undetected and almost completely dormant for a decade.  But it grew, slowly and surely, began to spread, until what started out as a plague-carrying fungus infected the entire community.

 

    Major Roberto Diaz and Lieutenant Colonel Trini Romano were dispatched to Kiwirrkura to resolve the situation.  They did it in spectacular and effective fashion – a plague/fungus may be tenacious and lethal, but it’s no match against a nuclear bomb.

 

    Before the detonation, a small sample of the fungus was collected, sealed in tube, and brought back to the US where it was “put to sleep” by deep-freezing it, and placed in a deep underground military repository, where it was then monitored round-the-clock.  Take that, killer fungus!  Nothing can go wrong.  Those safeguards are foolproof.

 

    Yeah, that’s what they always say, right before disaster strikes.

 

What’s To Like...

    The overall plotline of Cold Storage is similar to Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, so if you liked that book, you’ll enjoy this one.  Here however, David Koepp fleshes out Crichton’s premise: the characters are more fully developed, the fungus attains a certain degree of sentience, and a subtle strand of humor is deftly instilled into the tale.

 

    The book’s back-cover blurb implies that Roberto Diaz is the primary protagonist, and he certainly plays a key part.  But the main characters are a pair of coworkers at Atchison Storage where the fungus is still stored: a nerdy 34-year-old nicknamed “Teacake” and his aloof romantic interest, Naomi.  There aren’t a ton of characters to keep track of, but they include a challenging number of bad guys and losers, plus a couple of neat animals in the form of a cat named Mr. Scroggins, the Rat King, a deer that can use the elevator, and a cockroach.  Yeah, try working those into a storyline sometime.

 

    Chemistry works its way into the story several times, which is always a plus for me since I’m a chemist by profession.  I can’t tell you much about the reaction of polysaccharides and sodium palmitate, nor what the properties of fluoroantimonic acid are, but I can tell you that the part about sulfites being added to wine coolers is spot on.

 

    I liked the musical nod to Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper, and chuckled at Mooney’s views about God and where/how he got that nickname.  Roberto is a married man, but not immune to at least one bout of flirting and Teacake is a bit of a peeping-tom.  I'm partial to slightly-flawed heroes.

 

    The ending is appropriately exciting, but not very twisty, and a bit over-the-top.  Most of the bad guys get whacked, most of the good guys survive, the fungus gets funged.  Naomi and Teacake ride off into the sunset, and Roberto moves contentedly into retirement.  Cold Storage is a standalone story and I would be surprised if a sequel or series was made from it.

 

Ratings…
Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 936 ratings.

Goodreads: 3.66*/5, based on 7,601 ratings and 1,455 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Endosymbiont (n.) : an organism that forms a symbiotic relationship with another cell or organism.

Others: Fulminations (n., plural).

 

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “Don’t put your fingers in there,” she said, but he didn’t answer, because they were this far, and there was no other obvious, easy way.”  (pg. 57)

 

Excerpts...

    Armillaria solidipes spreads across the landscape at a rate of one to three feet per year and can take thirty to fifty years to kill an average-sized tree.  If it could move significantly faster, 90 percent of all botanic growth on Earth would die, the atmosphere would turn to poison gas, and human and animal life would end.  But it is a slow-moving fungus.

    Other fungi are faster.

    Much faster.  (pg. 1)

 

    Headless, dehydrated, and dying, it had climbed 323 feet, straight up, on a slick surface.  Given its tiny size, this feat was the human equivalent of climbing Kilimanjaro on your knees right after going to the guillotine.  The tiny roach had performed perhaps the greatest act of physical conquest in the history of earthly life.

    Then a car parked on top of it.

    C-nRoach1 died with a squishy pop beneath the right rear tire.  (pg. 205)

 

“You can’t leave a dead deer by the side of the road with three broken legs, a bullet in its stomach, and four more in its head.”  (pg. 117)

    The quibbles are minor.  The pacing felt slow, but perhaps that’s inherent when you’re dealing with a sentient zombie fungus.  Similarly, the “trapped with a monster in a confined space” trope has been done to death, but how else can you keep the protagonists from simply running away from the slow-moving danger?

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing – 32 instances in the first 20% of the book – but I thought it fit the tone of this type of tale.  Unsurprisingly, there were also references to several adult situations.

 

    The big problem were the WTFs.  There are some incredible coincidences that get our heroes to out of hopeless jams, including a timely appearance of a pistol-packing grandma and a jaw-dropping door-dropping desperation gunshot by Roberto.

 

    Still, I have a vague memory of a James Bond movie where he (Roger Moore, IIRC) jumps parachute-less out of a plane about to crash, lands on some flat, movable object, and snowboards down an alpine mountain (or maybe Mt. Everest), coming to a stop just in time to catch a toddy at a trendy outdoor coffeeshop.  Somehow, that daredevilry didn’t bother me a whit, and I think it was because it was in a movie, not a book.

 

    So perhaps it would be best if Cold Storage were made into a film.  I have a sneaking suspicion that's the author’s ultimate intent.  See below.

 

    7 Stars.  This is David Koepp’s first published novel, but, per Wikipedia and the book’s “About the Author” blurb, he is a celebrated screenwriter, credited with writing the films Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Mission Impossible, War of the Worlds, Angels & Demons, and many more.  I'm impressed, and I think that’s why Cold Storage reads like a movie script.

Dark Inheritance - W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear

   2012; 579 pages.  New Authors? : Yes.  Genre : Thriller; Genetics Gone Wrong.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    Really, for an anthropologist like Jim Dutton, it’s a dream job: raising and monitoring Umber, one of Smyth-Archer Chemists’ genetically augmented chimpanzees (bonobos, actually) in his own household.

    It’s not just the scientific research.  Umber seems more human than ape; she watches television, goes shopping for groceries, and cooks dinner.  Furthermore, she’s grown up alongside Jim’s 13-year-old, Brett, and the two have bonded like sisters.  They read Teen magazine together, and drool over Leonardo DiCaprio.

    So it’s easy to forget Umber is still the property of Smyth-Archer Chemists.  But she is, and when SAC comes knocking one day on Jim’s door, with the stated intention of taking Umber to Africa and rintroducing her to the wild, there’s not much he and Brett can do.  It’s either never see Umber again, or at least accompany her to Africa and be part of her forced transformation of habitat..

    Guess which one they choose.

What’s To Like...

    Dark Inheritance is a thriller about genetic tinkering gone awry, so if you enjoyed the premise in books like Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, you’ll like this one as well.  The book divides into two halves.  The first half is mostly set in the USA, and develops the background story.  To keep it from getting too dry (this is a thriller, after all, not a drama), the Gears sprinkle in some mayhem taking place in both Africa and Texas.

    The second half of the book has plenty of action, and is mostly situated in a small African country called Equatorial Guinea.  I liked the descriptions of the place; you get a feel for it without getting bogged down in an avalanche of details.

    There are gobs of characters to meet and keep straight, both of the human and simian variety.  It’s gotta be a challenge to develop several augmented apes into believable, 3-D characters, but the authors do a good job here.

    There’s plenty of blood and gore, particularly in the second half, plus a couple attempted rapes, and even some diarrhea to contend with.  The Africans are pretty much stereotyped, but the storyline plods along to an acceptable climax.  I very much liked the way the character of “Sky Eyes” was resolved.

Kewlest New Word…

Benighted (adj.) : in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance.

Excerpts...

    “Good God, Jim, after all these years, you’re still in love with her.  What any other woman on earth would give for that kind of devotion.”

    He shrugged.  “She’s the mother of my daughter.  I owe her something.”

    “That, or you’ve got monogamous genes.”

    “No, I like Levi’s, thanks.”  (loc. 1077)

   “God help you, don’t you realize that eventually the press is going to learn about this?  The professional community is already whispering about it.”

    “True.”  Godmoore laced his hands together.  “Fortunately, few people pay attention to scientists.  They’d much rather worry about athletes and movie stars.  We expect a rather slow building of interest.  When reporters start sniffing around the SAC apes, we will take the appropriate steps to defuse their interest.”  (loc. 2328)

Kindle Details...

    Dark Inheritance presently sells for $5.99 at Amazon.  This is kind of a one-off book for the Gears, but they have a slew of other e-books available, including their better-known “People of the” historical fiction series set in pre-Colombian Native America.  Most of their books are in the $5.99-$8.99 price range.

 “You wouldn’t believe what happened at the last faculty meeting.  We caught one of the archaeologists digging up dirt about people’s pasts.”  (loc. 1046)

    There’s nothing wrong with Dark Inheritance, but by the same token, nothing really excited me about it either.  The plotline has almost zero twists to it; once the Duttons get to Africa, you can pretty much predict everything that’s going to happen.

   Worse, the plotline is almost a duplicate of a book I read a while back, Robin Cook’s Chromosome 6 (reviewed here).  Indeed, the two tales are so alike – to the point of where both involve bonobos running amok in a man-made compound in Equatorial Guinea, that I’m surprised cries of plagiarism didn’t arise.  Oh well, at least the ending here is better than Cook’s, which remains at the top of my list for the worst ending ever penned by a recognizable, published author.

    6½ Stars.  Yeah, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a review.  Alas, I had some serious heart trouble in early July, and I am only now getting back to reading for extended periods.  But every day gets slightly better, and hopefully the worst is behind me.

Chromosome 6 - Robin Cook

   1997; 456 pages. New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Medical Thriller; Cri-Fi.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    Why would someone brazenly steal a corpse from the New York City morgue?  There’s no doubt about the victim’s identity – he was a member of the Mafia, gunned down as he exited a restaurant.  And while we’re at it, just how did the perpetrators manage to whisk away the body?  Medical Examiners Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery want to find out.

     Meanwhile, in a laboratory in the lush African jungles of Equatorial Guinea, molecular biologist Kevin Marshall looks out across the river to an uninhabited island and is once again dismayed to see a wisp of smoke rising into the air, from the same location that he previously noticed it.

    A huge distance separates Kevin from Laurie and Jack, but the two events are interrelated and their paths will eventually cross.

What’s To Like...

    The story’s setting switches back and forth between Africa and New York for the most part chapter-by-chapter.  The reader  is clued in early on as to the reasons for the smoke and the cadaver caper, so the fun is watching the protagonists solve these mysteries.

     I picked up Chromosome 6 because of a keen interest in chromosome manipulation and the role that plays in “jumps” in Evolution.  The book gave me some great insight in this area, and the story doesn’t get dragged down by information dumps.  I am a geography buff, but frankly, I’ve never heard of Equatorial Guinea, and I thoroughly enjoyed Robin Cook’s portrayal of it.

    The characters are, to a certain extent, stereotyped – there are ghetto-tough NYC blacks, thuggish Italian Mafioso, and flighty women.  But Kevin is a complete nerd, which made for a refreshingly different type of hero.  Chromosome 6 is apparently part of a medical thriller series featuring Jack and Laurie, but I didn’t feel like I lost anything by not knowing the backstory.

    I’ve dubbed this genre of books “Cri-Fi” (“Crichton Fiction”) because, like Jurassic Park, the science seems plausible enough to where readers and reviewers debate whether such things could actually happen.  It’s fiction, folks, but it’s a fun read.  To boot, there’s an ethical question here, also posed half a century ago by H. Beam Piper in Little Fuzzy – when is a species sentient enough to where we try to communicate with them instead of trying to kill and/or eat them?

Kewlest New Word. . .

Chock-a-block (adj.)  :  Crammed full of people or things.

Excerpts...

    Melanie shined the light in the direction of the splash.  Two glowing slits of light reflected back from the surface of the water.  Peering at them was a large crocodile.

    “Good lord!” Candace said as she stepped back from the water.

    “It’s okay,” Kevin said.  He let go of the rope, reached down and picked up a stout stick.  He threw the stick at the croc.  With another loud splash the crocodile disappeared beneath the water.

    “Oh, great!” Candace said.  “Now we have no idea where he is.”

    “He’s gone,” Kevin said.  “They’re not dangerous unless you’re in the water or they’re very hungry.”

    “Who’s to say he’s not hungry?” Candace commented.  (pg. 124)

    Cameron’s deputy quickly relieved Jack and the others of their passports, wallets, money, and car keys.  He gave them to Siegfried, who slowly went through them.  After he looked at Jack’s passport, he raised his eyes and glowered at him.

    “I’ve been told you are a troublemaker,” Siegfried said with disdain.

    “I’d rather think of myself as a tenacious competitor,” Jack said.  (pg. 404)

 “In Africa, nothing (is) easy.”  (pg.  323)

    The first 95% of Chromosome 6 is great.  Unfortunately, as numerous Amazon reviewers have noted, it’s marred by an abysmal ending.  I’m not given to hyperbole, but this could well be the worst ending I’ve read by an established, non-self-published author.

    The problem starts with the dual settings.  It has to be a writing challenge to give them both exciting climaxes, by one or more of the protagonists, at more or less the same time.  But it can be done.  Read Steve Berry’s The Jefferson Key (reviewed here) and watch him work to have his hero, Cotton Malone, save the day (on the same day!) in both Nova Scotia and Maryland.

    Here, both endings fizzle with a thud (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?).  In Africa, our heroes inflict some significant inconvenience to the bad guys’ operation.  But they don’t put it out of commission, nor do any of the evildoers get their just desserts.  And it’s not like Robin Cook wrote himself into a corner.  Both an over-the-top resolution (“Revenge of the Doubles”) and an under-the-top resolution (“any problem can be solved by the proper application of high explosives”) suggest themselves.  Instead, our heroes slink away, deeming flight is more prudent than fight.

    The ending for the New York setting is even worse.  It happens “off-screen”, and we get a bland recounting of it in the epilogue from the good-guy police detective.  All the higher-up baddies go free, and there’s nothing to stop their nefarious enterprise from replenishing the gene-pool and replacing their genius scientist, who they were going to shoot anyway.

    It’s difficult to rate a book that did so well for so long, then implodes in the last 20 pages.  We’ll go with 6½ Stars.  Hopefully, Robin Cook was just having a bad day, ran into deadline issues, or had a page-count limit imposed upon him by the publishers. 

The Charlemagne Pursuit - Steve Berry

2009; 540 pages. Book 4 of the Cotton Malone series. New Author? : No. Genre : Cri-Fi. Overall Rating : 10*/10.

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When Cotton Malone was 10, he was told by the Navy that his father passed away in a submarine disaster in the North Atlantic. Now, 38 years later, Cotton learns that the submarine (the "Blazek") was actually lost beneath the ice of Antarctica on a top secret mission, and that no search-&-rescue was ever launched for its crew.

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Which is puzzling enough. But what is really strange is that all sorts of people are trying to kill him now that he's learned this secret.

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What's To Like...

This is vintage Steve Berry. The action starts immediately and is non-stop. There are multiple plotlines and a well-researched and clearly-presented historical mystery ("The Charlemagne Pursuit") underpinning everything.

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The bad guys are not 2-D idiots, and at times it's hard to tell who's on whose side. And although this is part of a series, it is still a stand-alone book. Everything comes together nicely at the end, and I dare you to guess the outcome of the father/Blazek plotline.

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Kewl New Words...

Tympanum : the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance (say, to a temple), bounded by a lintel and an arch. Wiki it. Pediment : the larger triangular section above a structure, typically supported by columns. It often contains a tympanum. Yeah, Wiki this too.

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Excerpts...

Interesting how danger stimulated desire. This man, a navy captain with good looks, modest brains, and a few guts, attracted her. Why were weak men so desirable? (pg. 103)

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Commander Zachary Alexander, retired USN, had spent the last thirty years doing nothing but complaining. His heart. Spleen. Liver. Bones. Not a body part had escaped scrutiny. Twelve years ago he became convinced he needed an appendectomy until a doctor reminded him that his appendix had been removed ten years before. (pg. 144)

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Bacchus tells me that they have communicated with many people and they respect all forms of language, finding each beautiful in its own way. The language of this gray land is a flowing tongue in an alphabet long ago perfected. On writing they are conflicted. It is necessary, but they warn that writing encourages forgetfulness and discourages memory and they are correct. (pgs. 407-08)

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No people live longer than the documentation of their culture. (pg. 140)

What does it take for a Cri-Fi novel to earn a ten-star rating?

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First, there must be no slow spots. The story must have lots of action, yet also be thought-provoking. It has to keep the reader up past his bedtime turning the pages. The historical hypothesis has to make sense, even if it strains at the bounds of believability. (After all, a dinosaur theme park on an island in the Pacific isn't very believable, is it?) The bad guys ought to be a bit "gray". Except for the UE (Ultimate Evil), but he must be resouceful.

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It helps if there are more than only two parties chasing after the Ultimate Artifact/Secret. There has to be a distinct ending, not just a teaser to the next sequel. All the plotlines have to be resolved, and there have to be twists along the way. Finally, the conclusion needs to be logical, yet unforeseen.

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So how does The Charlemagne Pursuit measure up to all this? 10 Stars.

The Venetian Betrayal - Steve Berry

2007; 550 pages. Book #3 of Berry's "Cotton Malone" series. Genre : Action-Thriller; Cri-Fi. Overall Rating : A-.

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Someone's collecting a group of ancient medallions that were minted to commemorate Alexander The Great's semi-victorious campaign in India. They're doing this by stealing them out of museums, then torching the buildings to cover up the thefts. Cotton Malone becomes involved when he's included as part of the kindling at one of the heists.

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What's To Like...

It's a "busy" book, with a bunch of storylines. To wit : a search for Alexander The Great's grave; finding a cure for HIV; political intrigue in a newly-formed Alt-History nation in Central Asia made from the various "-stans" there (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc.); a secret order of Venetian businessmen; the re-invention of Greek Fire; and last but not least - what's so cotton-pickin' important about those medallions?

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Berry deftly interweaves all these lines. The action is non-stop, there are a bunch of red-herrings, and a zillion plot-twists. The tale teeters on having too many twists - is the one character a septuple or an octuple agent? But it keeps you on your toes.

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All this action and plot comes at the cost of character development - everyone is either black or white. Indeed, one of the main characters, Irina Zovastina, starts out "3-D gray", but towards the end she's "2-D black". One of her (wounded) soldiers heroically saves her, and she rewards him by shooting him in the head. Actually, she ends up killing lots of her fellow black-hats, yet is curiously averse to offing any of the good guys/gals.

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Kewl New Words...

Most of the new words were technical ones - dealing with architecture, medical research, etc. Some of these were : Mullioned (divided by vertical bars of wood or stone, such as a 'mullioned window'); Campanile (a bell tower, usually as a separate structure); Cartonnage (a type of material used for Egyptian funeral masks, consisting of layers of linen or papyrus and covered with plaster).

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Excerpt...

And you, adventurer, for my immortal voice,

though far off, fills your ears, hear my words,

Sail unto the capital founded by Alexander's father,

where sages stand guard.

Touch the innermost being of the golden illusion.

Divide the phoenix.

Life provides the measure of the true grave.

But be wary, for there is but one chance of success.

Climb the god-built walls.

When you reach the attic, gaze into the tawny eye,

and dare to find the distant refuge.

(pg. 130. this is the riddle to be solved)

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It was a Berry good book...

I liked The Venetian Betrayal, even if there were a couple eye-rolling moments. The cri-fi aspect (finding a cure for HIV) was done well enough to where one reviewer felt compelled to tell us why Berry's solution doesn't work. Well duh. Too many twists is much to be preferred over too few. The characters could've been developed a bit more, but then we'd have a 900-page tome. We'll give it an "A-", and note that the next book in the series, The Charlemagne Pursuit, is sitting on my TBR shelf.

The Pegasus Secret - Gregg Loomis

2006; 369 pages. Genre : Cri-Fi (Crichton Fiction). Book #1 of the Langford Reilly series. Ballyhooed like crazy at Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago. Overall Rating : C-.
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After an explosion in Paris kills his sister and her son, ex-CIA and now-lawyer Langdon Reilly vows to find the perpetrators and take his revenge. But his investigation uncovers a much deeper mystery (of course), involving an ancient mystical order, the Holy Grail, and a hidden message in a painting, a jpeg of which is at the end of this review.
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What's To Like...
TPS has the standard Crichton formula - start out with a bang (okay, it's more of a "boom"), and deliver non-stop action from then on. There actually is a lot of speculation about a hidden meaning in this painting (see Wiki's article here), and Loomis puts a novel spin on it..The flashbacks to the 1300's offer a nice contrast to the storyline, and Loomis refrains from getting "preachy" (take note, Dan Brown). Finally, the Gnostics are in it, which is always a plus for me.
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Goodness me. Then why the low rating?
Because there were a lot of irritations and plot weaknesses. Here are the major ones :
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Footnotes. Loomis uses them abundantly in the flashback chapters. But he puts them at the end of the chapter, so you're constantly flipping back and forth to read them. They ought to be at the bottom of each page. Critical? No. Annoying? Yes.
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Castigation versus Castration. Reilly's GF is a sexy German who constantly misuses English words. At one point she means to say "castration", but comes up with "castigation" instead. Folks, castigation is not a common word. If you're fluent enough in a foreign language to know this verb, you're not going to confuse it with castration. I'm sure this is supposed to be comic relief, but after 50 of these mix-ups, it gets old. You get the tip. I mean 'point'. Yeah, she used that one, too.
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Sniper Gender. For some reason, Reilly hides the sniper's gender (via ixnay on the pronouns), so that you're supposed to be in the dark about the identity. But it serves no purpose and it's obvious who he/she/it really is.
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T&I. (Torture & Interrogation). The bad guys are going to T&I our hero. But clever Reilly is really clever - he asks them questions instead. And they answer him. Then they give him an electro-shock to scare him into telling all. But after one jolt, they leave to go do some chanting for a couple hours before renewing the T&I. Didn't they watch those Austin Powers movies?
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Paging Dr. Moriarty. The UE (Ultimate Evil) guy isn't developed at all. He makes a late entrance, blows it for the whole mystical order, and is disappointingly incompetent. Sorry, I like it better when the UE is a worthy opponent.
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The ending is clunky. The fact is, Reilly doesn't have any bargaining chips, but the bad guys acquiesce anyway. "Hey, I know where the Grail is!" (So we'll move it.) "I'll expose your secret organization." (Sorry, the blaring police raid last night did that already) "I'll blackmail you about your blackmailing operation." (Do you realize you have no evidence of that?).
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Finally, there's a superfluous epilogue, unless Reilly is going to give up lawyering to become a tent revivalist.
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Bottom line - I just couldn't buy into the story, and that meant it wasn't exciting to read. Interestingly, the first four killings all took place off-screen, and for a while I thought Loomis was going to write this in "cozy" style. Now that would've been something. But then the bodies start dropping on-screen, so there went that possibility.
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Maybe I'm expecting too much for a debut novel to be equal to Jurassic Park or The Da Vinci Code. There are 4 or 5 books in the series now, and it's quite possible that Loomis hits his stride with time. The Amazon reviews are more or less evenly split from 5* to 1* (the overall rating is 3½ stars). The few Book Blogs that review it are mostly positive. So while I don't personally recommend The Pegasus Secret, it should be noted that there are other fans of this genre who rate it higher.

The Eight - Katherine Neville

1988, 598 pages. Genre : Historical Action; Cri-Fi (Crichton Fiction). Overall Rating : B.

   .Two intertwined stories, one set in the 1970's; the other in the 1790's. The modern tale centers around Catherine "Cat" Velis, a computer geek who's about to be transferred to Algiers due to office politics. The older tale is set primarily in France, and follows Mereille de Remy, a novice nun whose cloistered life is about to be upended by the infamous Reign of Terror. Both women soon find themselves trying to collect all the pieces to an ancient, mystical, rumored-to-be-all-powerful chess set that is also coveted by the bad guys.

.What's To Like...
    The emphasis is on the storyline, which is complex, but not confusing. There is the central theme of chess, which has been a lifelong passion of mine. A lot of the book takes place in Algeria, which is a nice change of scenery. Some attention even is paid to the etymology of "Car". As in "Carthage" and "Hamilcar". Kewlness.
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There are plenty of twists in the storyline to keep you on your toes. Telling the good guys from the bad guys is quite the challenge. Both Mereille and Cat are strong female leading characters. (Well, the queens are the strongest pieces on the chessboard.) Indeed, there really aren't any weak women in the book. Amazingly, the men aren't pansies either.
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Last but not least - there's even some romance. Enough to appeal to women readers, but not enough to lose me.

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Quibbles...
You are reminded a few too many times that there's a "bigger game" being played. And there's too much "telegraphing" with sentences like "Little did I know that thirty blocks away, a move was about to take place that would soon alter the course of my life." (page 130).

.Once in a while the plot gets clunky. For example, at one point Cat is being chased by a host of gun-shooting baddies, and is forced to jump off a pier into the Mediterranean. Alas (sez you), she has a knapsack of valuables to weigh her down, including a priceless ancient book. Lucky for her, that book just happens to be in a waterproof container (in a desert?), and she uses the weight of the knapsack to walk (underwater) along the bottom of the pier to safety, whilst the baddies wait for her to surface at the end of the pier to shoot her. Yeah. I don't think so.

.But these are minor. My biggest peeve with The Eight is the printing. A lot of the "e's" have their cross-bar missing, making them look like "c's". So your reading gets interrupted by things like trcc, pcacc, crcatc, ctc.

."It's a great huge game of chess that's being played all over the world....Oh what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them. I wouldn't mind being a pawn, if only I might join - though of course I should like to be a Queen best." (Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking Glass)

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This is a well-researched book. I can attest to that re the Chess parts. Some critics were turned off by the name-dropping. But I'd much rather read about Napoleon, William Blake, and Robespierre than some unknown commoner. That's what historical fiction is all about.

.Others didn't like the ending, but I disagree. I won't put any spoilers here; so let's just say the ending was similar to, yet better than, that of The Da Vinci Code.

.I recommend this to anyone who likes to read Dan Brown and Michael Crichton, neither of which has put out anything new lately. Yeah I know, Crichton's dead, but that doesn't stop Robert Ludlum. This was Ms. Neville's first published book, so the quibbles are quite forgiveable. She's written a half dozen or so since then, including (15 years later) the sequel to this story, called The Fire. I'm sure I'll be reading it sometime soon.

Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Overall Rating : B.

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Something is slashing and gnashing people at the New York Museum of Natural History, and eating their brains. Is it human, animal, vegetable, monstrous, demonic, or alien? Whatever it is, Margo Green better find out quick cuz the museum wants to open a new exhibition in 4 days, and the Museum Management isn't about to let a few grisly slayings get in their way.

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What's To Like...

This is a page-turner. It starts off fast; there are no slow spots; and you can finish it in a couple of days. There are a few twists to keep you on your toes.

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The heroes aren't Mary Sues. (not sure what a Mary Sue is? See here). Indeed, the mayor of New York gets cast in a favorable light. When's the last time a politician got that treatment in a novel?

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And the book actually comes to a conclusion! You don't have to read 10 sequels for everything to wrap up. Take that, Robert Jordan.

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What's Not To Like...

Despite the twists, the story is somewhat predictable. The bad guys get chomped; the good guys live. The ending, although climactic, is also a let-down. Brain-Chomper gets his just desserts, but you don't get many details about his ultimate demise, and the Feds apparently snatch up the body before the authors can give you much of a description of the corpse.

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Finally, you have to believe that life, and new exhibits, go on as always, despite employees and visitors getting mutilated and disembrained.

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Oh Cri-Fi! Thy name is Crichton!

The teaser on the cover says it all : "Alien meets Jurassic Park". But as Cri-Fi, Relic just doesn't quite measure up to JP. Oh, there are some computer-generated read-outs, but one doesn't get the feeling that the authors made a lot of technical effort to make this scientifically believable. (*)

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Still, it is a decent book, so we'll give it a B, and see if we can find its sequel, Reliquary, at the used-bookstore.

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(*) : There's one glaring loose end to this story. A plane carrying most of the Amazonian expedition crashes early in the timeline, giving rise to the theory that a "Curse" is involved. But it becomes evident later on that Brain-Chomper wasn't on that plane. So why did it crash? Inquiring nit-pickers want to know.

Next - Michael Crichton

Overall Rating : C+.

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The latest offering from the author of Jurassic Park, Next is typical Crichton - exploring the potential, the perils, and the pitfalls of genetic engineering. From transgenic creatures to cures for diseases; from gene-snatching kidnappers to corporate in-fighting; there's a whole gamut of themes in the book.

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What's To Like...

The transgenic critters will most likely be your favorite threads in the book. There's an Sumatran orangutan that enjoys cussing in French and Dutch; a talking parrot that can do math in his head and carry on intelligent conversations with humans; and Dave the half-chimp/half-human who has trouble "fitting in" as a schoolboy.

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Despite its length, this is a quick read. Apparently Crichton has developed "James Patterson Symdrome" as there are 528 pages, divided into 95 chapters. So when you're ready to stop reading at night, you'll always be a page or two from the end of a chapter.

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The book has a reasonably good ending, with some of the storylines being skillfully (albeit, somewhat incredibly) brought together.

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What's Not To Like...

There are too many storyines, the majority of which you are going to have only a minimal interest in following. So there are some slow spots in the book. Indeed, one gets the feeling that Crichton had trouble deciding which of about two dozen plotlines to put into the book, so he included them all.

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Worse, as compared to Jurassic Park (and that comparison is inevitable), there's too much 'preaching' and technical warning, and not enough story-telling. Let's face it, while Crichton enlightens us as to the problems with cloning in JP, what we're really interested in is whether the velociraptors are going eat the good guys for lunch.

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Of course, in JP, you had only 3 or 4 plots to follow; here you have more than a dozen. If you do the math (528 pages; 25% 'preaching'; and let's say 12 plots, just to be on the conservative side), each storyline here is going to get about 35 pages to come to full resolution. That's a whole bunch a shallow tales.

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Life Is Like A Crash On The Freeway...

There was a forgettable movie a couple decades ago. IIRC, it had Robert "Wild Wild West" Conrad as a California motorcycle cop; it had Betty White (I think) as a middle-aged wife dying of cancer, and Buddy Ebsen as her husband trying to keep her from taking her own life. There were about a dozen other storylines-&-actors, none of which I remember.

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You spent the whole movie jumping around on these disparate stories, wondering how the heck they were going to tie in with each other. Surprise, surprise; they all were involved in a mega-car-crash on an L.A. freeway. Conrad goes flying through the air; Ebsen dies, leaving Betty White to try and carry on without him. And everybody else... well... like I said, it was a forgettable movie.

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That's the way Next comes across to me. Too many plots, and not enough story-telling. It would've been better to only deal with the transgenic animals, and leave the legalistic and corporate woes to a 20-page sermon at the end of the book.

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Despite its flaws, this is still Crichton, and he is still one of the better writers around. Heck, we named a genre after him. The transgenic animals are enough to make Next sufficiently engaging to read. So we'll give it a C+ and a lukewarm recommendation; and hope that the mouthy parrot, the foul-mouthed orangutan, and the monkey-boy show up in a sequel.

The Romanov Prophecy - Steve Berry

Overall Rating : B.

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My second Steve Berry novel (the first was The Third Secret); this one is less Cri-Fi, and more action. Set in modern-day Russia, where the people have decided they want to return to having a Czar as a ruler, Miles Lord, an American Afro-American lawyer on business in Moscow, stumbles onto a prophecy that implies that not all of the Romanovs were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

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What's To Like...

Lots of action from the get-go. It's heavy on historical references, which suits me just fine. Rasputin becomes a prophet, and Youssopov is re-made as a good guy.

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The book is a page-turner, and Berry once again doesn't bore you with page after page of philosophical preaching. Take a note, Dan Brown.

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What's Not To Like...

If there's such a thing as TOO much action, this is it. Essentially, this is a 384-page chase scene. The bad guys, professional assassins all of them, can't seem to hit an elephant from 50 feet away (much like in the movie Miami Vice, but that's a subject for another post). The hero finds the bad guys repeatedly and incredibly picking up his trail, and never figures out that someone close to him might possibly be tipping them off.

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Finally, the plot pretty much plays itself out with no surprise twists. You gotta have surprises when you're reading Cri-Fi.

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Talk About Implausibility...

The most important parameter for any historical fiction is its believability. And TRP fails that in one key area.

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No, I'm not talking about some of the Czar's family surviving. That's been a romantic, albeit highly unlikely hypothesis for decades. Nor am I talking about the incredible shooting inaccuracy of the assassins. You can rationalize that away as being subject to the divinely-inspired prophecies of Rasputin.

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The unbelievable part is the opening premise that a majority of the Russian people would for some reason want to return to Czarist rule. Pigs will fly before that happens. Some Russians may want democracy; some may want a return to the Communist days; some may want some sort of uber-nationalism; and who knows, some may want Dubnutz to come stay with them after we throw his a$$ out of office next year. However, the one thing they can all agree on - no one wants the return of the Czar.

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The Romanov Prophecy is another solid effort by Steve Berry. If it isn't quite on the same level as The Da Vinci Code, it's still a good read while we wait for Brown to get off his butt and put out another novel.

The Lake House - James Patterson

Overall Rating : D-.

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This is the sequel to Patterson's 1998 book, When The Wind Blows, and is not to be confused with the film "The Lakehouse" (one word) with Sandra Bullock, which has absolutely no relationship to this book.

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As in WTWB, six genetically-engineered "bird kids" get help from a (female) Colorado veterinarian and a (male) decommissioned FBI agent against an evil doctor intent on on turning them into lab rats.

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What's To Like...

It's your typical James Patterson novel. Fast-reading, fast-moving, and the average length of a chapter is 3-4 pages. So if you're in the habit of reading before going to bed (like I am), you won't have to read very far when it's time to turn out the lights.

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What's Not To Like...

Unfortunately, plenty. Like most readers, I thoroughly enjoy Patterson's "Alex Cross" detective series. But either he's burnt out on serial-killer thrillers, or else he thinks anyone can write a Cri-Fi novel.

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Alas, he's no Michael Crichton. He takes no time to try to convince you of the scientific validity of the "genetic engineering" theme in these two books, so you never really feel like it could be real.

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At least WTWB is moderately interesting. Alas, there's nothing new added by Patterson in the sequel. Same plot, same chase scenes, same type of bad guys (evil but bumbling), same ending. Except now, everything is more-sloppily done.

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Dr. Nefarious has a lucrative "entire internal organ transplant" business going. He's rejuvenated 40 of the world's leaders, and is therefore both insanely rich and insanely powerful. Why he would want to jeopardize all this for 6 bird-kids is an unexplained mystery.

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To boot, he's cloned himself. Four times, even. And apparently does a heap of Balco Barry steroids, cuz he's also incredibly strong. And he can tell your IQ just by looking at you when you're sleeping. But he's not too intelligent. After he (and his gang of clones, thugs and hired assassins) are out-smarted and out-fought several times by the bird-kids, including having one of his clone-selves eradicated, what does he do? Attempts to kill the chief bird-kid, all by himself, armed only with a scalpel. Go on now, guess who wins.

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Nothing gets resolved at the end. The bird-kids kill one Evil-Doctor-Clone and one Rejuvenated-World-Leader; then the original Dr. Nefarious is killed at the very end. But you're never told what happens to the organ-tranplant rejuvenating business after that. Custody of the bird-kids is transferred from their natural parents (who want to retain custody) to the Vet and FBI-ex-agent, even though it's obvious from both books that this doesn't make them one bit safer. And the remaining three Evil Clones are left to do... well, whatever three now-leaderless clones do. Look for a fourth for a pinochle game, maybe?

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And on, and on. A 7th-grader could do a better job of crafting a plot and tying up loose ends than Patterson does here.

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When Border's Has A Book On Sale, It Means...

I found this book on sale at Borders Bookstore. Not on their regular bargain tables. Nope, TLH had its own table and was 30% off. That makes it a good deal, right?

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Wrong. It's clear that based on Patterson's reputation, they bought tons of copies of this book, and the books weren't selling. Jimmy-Boy was pulling a fast one. My best guess is that he fooled the publishing company; the publishers then fooled the bookstores; and the bookstores then fooled the readers. I feel like Curly in The Three Stooges. Moe slaps Larry; Larry slaps Curly; and Curly discovers he has no one to slap.

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But I digress. This is a stinker of a novel. When The Wind Blows is so-so, so if you want to see how Patterson fares at writing Cri-Fi, read it, and skip this sequel. And learn a lesson as to why Borders Bookstore gives books like this their own special sale.

The Third Secret - Steve Berry

Overall Rating : B.

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If you liked Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, you'll like The Third Secret. There's Vatican intrigue and nasty skullduggery as Cardinals wallow in politics to increase their odds of being the next Pope.

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What's To Like...

Berry has throroughly researched several Marian Apparitions and Catholic Prophecies; and weaves them skillfully into the plot. He concentrates on three of them : The Malachy "Prophecies of the Popes"; the Three Secrets of Fatima, and the Ten Secrets of Medugorje. The Fatima secrets are by far the most famous, and the "uber-secret" Third Secret of Fatima provides the title to this book.

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Amazingly, Berry manages to combine these three prophetic events into one coherent message, without compromising their historical background. All three are in fact non-fiction events, and can be found at Wikipedia.

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I also like the "even treatment" Berry gives God and the Church. Most authors choose one side or the other. Either their book finds nothing good to say at all about Christianity, or else its a thinly-veiled call for you to get right with God. Berry's posture falls halfway between "Heaven and Hell", so to speak.

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What's Not To Like...

If you're a loyal Catholic, you're not going to like this any more than you liked the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

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Also, you go through almost the entire book waiting for The Third Secret to be revealed, and when it finally does... well... it's quite the anticlimax. In fairness, it has to be said that the Vatican's official version of The Third Secret is just as much of a letdown, fueling speculation that they gave us a red herring.

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Finally, the protagonist is just too "pure evil" to be believable. I have no doubt that getting elected Pope is all about politics and nothing about seeking God's guidance, but the depths of the misdeeds here come off as too contrived.

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Mail Hairy, Gruel of Face...

The Third Secret is not gonna bump Jurassic Park and The Da Vinci Code from the pinnacle of Cri-Fi. But it's a good read, about interesting subjects, and the Mary-sightings and Papal Prophecies are well-researched.

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So we'll give it a solid "B", and refer you over to Wikipedia for some good readings on the "real" Fatima, Medugorje, and Malachy topics. The Vatican's stance on these sorts of things is surprisingly tepid.

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It should be noted that the Malachy Papal Prophecies, which in theory give visions of the (at the time) next 112 Popes have now reached #111. Which makes you wonder if there's an implied "end of the world" or "end of an era" coming just around the corner. Berry weaves this nicely into the book, but the historical prophecies are almost more captivating.