Sunday, May 17, 2015

Book Review: Gemini Effect by Chuck Grossart

The Gemini Effect won the Amazon Breakthrough contest and resides on the top ten science fiction bestseller lists.  The story is very simple.  

A chemical weapon was invented during the Cold War.  Secret military operatives believe that they quashed the threat and then years later the chemical resurfaces through rats.  The rat infects other rats, who in turn, infect other rats, creating an army of rats and then later on birds and even humans who kill cities at night and then burrow into the ground, duplicating themselves through some kind of independent fast-track cloning method.  The rats and others are almost impossible to kill.  The president gets involved and is forced to consider nuclear weapons as a solution to stopping the spread.  Members of his cabinet give him terrible advice.  Without spoiling the entire book, the world solves the problem.
My Review: The story sounds almost too simple, but it's not.  Mr. Grossart is a master at getting the reader to turn the page.  Action, action, action from page one to the end.  His writing is very clear, which can be difficult when describing technical action scenes with advanced weapons.  But I understood almost every word and finished the book in a few days.  The characters would probably be considered flat by your typical NY Times reviewer, but that didn't matter to me.  It was all about the story and the story was addicting.  I also LOVED the ending-not the predictable "and they all lived happily ever after" type of ending that I despise.  In fact, I'm not even sure if it was happy, but it worked and I thought it was brilliant.  If I had to criticize, I would mention some of the bomber/aircraft information was a bit much for me, but that was easy enough for me to skim over.  Overall, this is an excellent, quick read.  I hope Mr. Grossart keeps pumping out these high-octane sci-fi thrillers.  Well done!  5/5 Stars.

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