Rating:  -
James Rollins was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1961. With his three brothers and three sisters, he was raised in the Midwest and rural Canada. He graduated with a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the University of Missouri and went on to establish his own veterinary practice in Sacramento, California. His sense of adventure often takes him either underground or underwater.
This is the another action packed adventure from the author, whose books for me anyway are consistently good and always an enjoyable read. Long may he continue to write them for his growing number of fans. Some writers have an immediate impact and then die away. James Rollins has slowly built his reputation over a period of years, what you might call a slow burner, but all the better for it.
The new millennium's first eclipse of the sun, looked forward to by many people as a natural phenomenon rarely seen in the span of a human lifetime casts a shroud over the Earth. And then catastrophe struck . . .
Solar flares have triggered a series of gargantuan natural disasters. Earthquakes and hellfire rock the globe. The death toll begins to rise at an unprecedented rate. And in the midst of chaos, Air Force One and America's president have vanished from the skies . . .
Rating:  -
One lousy star, huh? That says a lot of what I thought of the plot (lame & laughable), characters (shallow & uninventive) and ending (bloody ridiculous).
Let's start with the plot: some supernatural (non scientific) event occurs with an eclipse & things go poo-poo. A big crystal in the middle of the ocean (gee-whiz). Crystal contains impossible properties (painful). Temples and dah-dah-dah...
Characters, you may ask? Oh, just your typical super-human, multi-lingual dry and shallow types. Nothing to get interested in. Also, it's not too often to you the pleasure of reading the phrase "s*** eating grin" three times in one book.
The ending? I won't spoil your day of agonizing reading, but it sucks.
I've read better cracks on a sidewalk. I've read better marbled fat on a steak. I've read better poo thrown by monkeys.
Rating:  -
I like Science Fiction, specifically space opera and future tech stuff. Unfortunately, I felt that the storyline behind this book was a bit far fetched, even for me.
The big differnce I'm sure is that the far future sci-fi is so far in advance, that we cannot gainsay what the author has thought up. Furthermore, when an author starts writing quasi sci-fi that changes some of our preconcieved notions of science, it can still be believable and enjoyable, if there are some grains of realism behind them.
However, to try and change the powerplant of the earth (i.e. the electro-magnetic field) from the liquid core to this just didn't really fly with me.
Now, don't get me wrong, James Rollins can create characters in his book almost on par with the great one, David Weber. The majority of the characters in this book were very well developed and did the things they should have done.
All in all, not a bad book, but not his best either.
Rating: -
When I read a techno-thriller, I expect the tech part to be accurate. I expect the thriller parts to be thrilling. Sadly, this book lacks in both areas.
To be sure, Mr. Rollins tosses around a lot of techno-babble jargon, but none of it makes sense. Even the most basic ideas are done wrong. In a turn out of a 1950s detective novel, one of the main characters is using a .38 semi-auto pistol. I'm sure there might be some out there, but not in this context.
A small submarine that can go to the breathtaking depth of 600 meters is central to the plot. 1800 feet? No big deal, but Mr. Rollins tries to make it seem as if this is the limit of human ability. An underwater base that must be flooded and then drained to be put in place? Apparently they forget ballast when it was designed.
As far as the military actions, they are laughable to say the least. It almost seemed as if the author just sat down with a reference book, picked weapon designations at random, and tossed them into the manuscript.
Character development was poorly done. Our hero, an ex-Navy SEAL and astronaut, is apparently out of the service due to his inability to do anything right, from what I can gather from his exploits. Nothing is planned well, nothing works the way it should. In short, a bumbling imbecile.
The love interest is tossed in as an afterthought. Even the animal interest was ridiculous.
I wish I had read the reviews before I wasted my money.
Rating: -
I think when James Rollins decides to write a new book, all he does is change the setting and the characters names. The plot remains exactly the same. It gets tiring after a while.
|
