Book Review: The Cobra Event by Richard Preston

The Cobra Event
Author: Richard Preston
Released Date: August 29th 1998
Publisher: Ballantine Books

Five days ago. a homeless man on a subway platform died in agony as startled commuters looked on. Yesterday, a teenager started having violent, uncontrollable spasms in art class. Within minutes, she too was dead.

Dr. Alice Austen is a medical pathologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. What she knows is that the two deaths are connected. What she fears is that they are only the beginning…

*Goodreads Blurb*

MY REVIEW

It begins with a common cold. You find yourself blowing your nose every moment. You sneeze occasionally. You take some cold syrup. The syrup doesn’t help. You feel even worse. You're drifting apart. Someone’s talking to you, but you aren’t paying any attention. You feel weak and weary and disoriented. And then you suddenly drop to the floor, thrashing around violently. You feel strange blisters in your mouth. Next you begin to chew your lips and the insides of your mouth in relish. You know you’re hurting yourself but you just can’t help it. Then your spine begins to curve backward and backward, until you…

Sounds creepy, right?

Well, I’ve just described how the Cobra virus works.

The Cobra Event is a realistic science fiction. It’s about a virus, Cobra, which affects the brain and turns one into a monster, killing oneself from inside.

A homeless man dies on a subway platform. Days later, a teenager dies under strange circumstances. Dr. Alice Austen of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is sent to New York to examine what seems like an outbreak of a disease. Along with her fellow scientists, she discovers this disease is actually a virus, released by an unknown terrorist, with strong indications of a bigger release to come soon. What follows is a flurry of scientific activities as they battle to discover the properties of this new virus, because doing that would help identify the terrorist.

This is one of those kinds of books I refer to as edutainment. I learnt much scientific stuff while reading. I was entertained by the chilling story as well. There were lots of biological and medical stuffs I liked in the book. I was distracted, though, by some of the expositions. The author seemed to explain everything, and with too many details, the reading experience felt like science lecture sometimes. I was detached a bit, but I kept on reading because I wanted to see how everything ends, though I predicted rightly who would and who wouldn’t survive.

About the characters, I didn’t really connect with any of them. I felt they didn’t have much depth. The bad guy, a scientist-turned-terrorist, however, was a real bad guy.

Overall, I’d say The Cobra Event is a wonderful read. I loved the chills it gave me—sometimes I stopped to wonder what if the air I were breathing was filled with virus particles. That’s what this book does to you. It shows you what a bioterrorist attack could look like today. I’d have given it more stars if the first part of the book didn’t drag out. The last fifty pages, with its fired shots and explosions, were the best parts.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good medical thriller and who doesn’t mind lectures while reading fiction. The author has some really great nonfiction books.

You’ll love this book if you’re a Michael Crichton fan.

So, here goes my three (***) stars to The Cobra Event.

Book Review: Prey by Michael Crichton

PREY
Author: Michael Crichton
Released Date: November 11th  2003
Publisher: Avon

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.

Every attempt to destroy it has failed.

And we are the prey.

*Goodreads Blurb*

MY REVIEW

This is my first Michael Crichton read, and I loved it. Prey is told in first person by Jack Foreman, a stay-at-home dad, who suspects his wife, Julia, of having an affair. Julia, a vice president at Xymos, a molecular manufacturing company, works late night, and one night she doesn't even come home at all. Eventually, Julia shows Jack a video demonstration of what they’re working on - a cloud of nanoparticles, which works as one big camera. Then something goes wrong at the facility and Jack is invited by Ricky, his former employee to come and help fix the problem. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory, and he has to get it back. But this cloud is self-reproducing, intelligent; it evolves quickly, and is now a threat. There at the facility Jack learns the truth about his wife, the nanoparticles, and his former co-workers.

The book has a slow start. Jacks suspects his wife of having an affair and he’s taking time on deciding what to do because he isn’t very sure yet. He doesn't want a divorce; he wants to keep his family together, and his kids, always biting each other, are not helping matters. He can’t get a job; he’s rejected wherever he applies because of a ‘got fired for doing the right thing’ incident in his former workplace.

And then the story kicks off when he’s asked to come and solve a problem at the plant. Then comes the action, the suspense, and of course the thrill. You wouldn't want to be anywhere near the swarms – those molecular robots. They're dangerous, they hurt the skin, and they can get into your nasal cavity, suffocating you. They kill wildlife as well as humans. Jack has to stop it, no matter what. Because he designed the program used in modeling the swarms. But he can't do it himself. There are other notable characters there like the quiet, strong and beautiful Mae; devious Ricky; loud-farting/non-stop talking Charley; and of course Jack’s beautiful and secretive wife, Julia. Some of these characters help to achieve the goal, while others stand in Jack’s way. There are lots of deaths in the end. 

I loved the technological and biological details the author wove in the various part of the story. It’s blended well into the narrative and doesn’t cause any distraction. Even though I found some of them boring or overly done, I still learnt something from them.

The five-paged bibliography at the end of the book shows well the thorough research undertaken by the author for this book. It is a book worth reading, and I’ll certainly read more titles from Crichton. I have my mind on Jurassic Park next. Although I’ve seen the movie, I’d still love to experience the book side of it.

I recommend this book to any sci-fi and techno-thriller lover. If you like the science-goes-wrong genre, then this is the book for you.

Four stars (****) to Prey.

Book Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent (Divergent #2)
Author: Veronica Roth
Released Date: March 1st 2012
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.
*Goodreads Blurb*


                                                                     MY REVIEW
Honestly, I didn’t enjoy INSURGENT as much as I enjoyed DIVERGENT. It would have been a perfect read, but I had some issues with it. I won’t talk about those issues now; first I’ll talk about what I liked in the book.

INSURGENT is one book filled with surprises and a lot of revelations about the dystopian world and characters the author created. After imagining what some of the other factions might look like and how the people live inside them, I get to experience it myself here. I was transported to the Amity, then the Factionless, then the Candor, and finally to the Erudite. I was also brought back to the Abnegation. Thus it feels like I’ve lived in all of these factions. The author describes each scene so well I could picture everything in my head. The writing is good, the sentences and paragraphs flows so well, and the pace is fast – I kept turning pages after pages even after deciding I would stop, do something else and then continue reading again.

My disappointment, however, were the two main characters, those two people who made me fall in love with the first book, that kick-ass heroine and the mysterious, quiet guy: Tris and Four (He’s referred to Tobias almost throughout the whole book, but I prefer the name Four) I felt like Tris and Four were replaced by completely different people. Yes, I know that characters in a book, especially in a series, ought to go through some changes. But they seemed to develop into characters I wouldn’t care to read about. Four changes from the cool guy he was in the first book to some annoying guy here. He keeps secrets from the girl he loves, he’s always angry with her, he always screams at her, even though he knows all what she has passed through. He just wasn’t the supportive and cool guy I liked in the first book. Also, he was more like a secondary character in this one.

Tris is worse. I was put off by her too much whining. She is quite different from the tough, resilient character I got to know in the first book. Yeah, I know it’s hard to get over the death of your loved ones, and it’s harder to put guilt behind you’ve killed a friend, but at some point you just have to put everything behind you and move on, considering the kind of dangerous society you live in, and considering the fact that a lot of people want you dead. Tris was so full of indecision in this one, and I wondered whether she’d borrowed the traits of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. At some point I felt like screaming at her, “Come on, Tris. Pick up that gun and shoot at your enemies!” I hope she’d have gotten over the guilt trip in the next book, if not I’m never, ever going to forgive her.

Also, I didn’t like Tris' over-recklessness in this one. She keeps putting herself in danger even when she doesn’t need to. Four says it better here: “I love Tris the Divergent, who makes decisions apart from faction loyalty, who isn’t some faction archetype. But the Tris who’s trying as hard as she can to destroy herself … I can’t love her.”

Yes, Tris, I can’t like you when you keep reminding me that you’re just a character in a book. I liked you better in the first book, where you felt so real to me. Concentrate on the external conflict, instead of allowing the conflict inside you to consume you.

Somehow I think the tension between Tris and Four was overdone. She lies so much to him, and Four in turn keeps secrets from her. For much of this book, apart from the exciting action scenes, and the beautiful writing, Tris does nothing more than feel sorry for herself, or get into romantic quarrels with Four.

Despite my disappointment with the main characters, I’d say it’s a good read, and the action kept me going. The book ends in a cliffhanger, leaving me wanting more. But I can do nothing but wait for the third book, which has no title yet. I can only call it DETERGENT in the meantime.

Four Stars **** to INSURGENT.

Check out my review of DIVERGENT here.

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent #1
Author: Veronica Roth
Released Date: May 3rd 2011
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.
*Goodreads Blurb*

Traditionally, I tend to give my rating after my review, but I'll go against conventions on this one. Divergent is a 5-Star read.

Why 5-stars?

Okay...

Firstly, the book is awesome. Why? Because when I read a book and I picture myself inside the world the author created, then I think the book awesome. The author did a good job in the world creating process. ONE STAR *

Secondly, the characters are captivating. Yeah, when I read a book and I begin to imagine myself chilling or chatting with any of the characters, it means that I really like those characters too well, and they feel so real to me, like real people, instead of like characters in a book. I don’t know what to say yet about having a dream where I saw myself amongst the Dauntless initiates. TWO STARS **

Thirdly, when I read a book and I begin to marvel at the story concept, then I say it’s a good book. Divergent is similar to The Hunger Games. Yeah, it’s true. But I think the similarities only ends in the first-person present tense narrative, young, independent, resilient female protagonist, and genre too. Divergent is unique on its own. Instead of the people being divided into districts like in The Hunger Games, the people in the book are divided into five factions, based on five virtues that each faction possesses: Candor (honesty), Abnegation (selflessness), Dauntless (bravery), Amity (peacefulness), and Erudite (intelligence). And there's another faction called the FACTIONLESS. I just loved the concept. Far different from being put in an arena where you fight and kill each other until one person is remaining. THREE STARS ***

Overall I’d say the story is captivating, the action and pace fast. There are good action scenes in this one, and I think the author excels there. The book is too visual; I could picture the whole world inside my head, and I like the way the author describes things. The dialogue is interesting, and the author sure knows how to weave in suspense, dropping necessary information when you least expect it. FOUR STARS ****

Yeah, I loved the book. FIVE STARS *****

Four is my favorite character in this one. I like him because he’s unpredictable, strong, and he’s even more intriguing and humane than Beatrice. Sometimes I imagined him being the protagonist. I thought the author also did a good job in creating convincing villains.

I recommend this book to anybody who wants to read about strong-willed protagonists and doesn't want to read about weak, dependent protagonists. Beatrice is one of the strongest female protagonists I've read, and she’s the perfect book girlfriend, even though she’s short, skinny, and not as pretty as other female protagonists I've read. But you don’t want to mess with her; she’s a kick-ass.

Happy Reading!