Just Finished Reading: Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear.

Starting with the investigation of a mass grave in the former Soviet state of Georgia rumours of a deadly virus alert the US Centre for Disease Control that something strange is happening in the East. Before they can fully investigate, the world is hit with a wave of spontaneous miscarriages that turn out to be only the beginning of events that will shape the future of humanity.

I’m a Greg Bear fan so I was doubly disappointed with this book. What started out as an interesting idea – that ‘junk’ DNA is actually the code that drives evolution – too quickly descended into a rambling incoherent mess. This was not really helped by what I felt to be the unrealistic responses both from the scientific community and the US government to the crisis. Despite good characterisation I just couldn’t get into the story so slogged through it hoping that it would improve. What was most frustrating was that the book is very good – in parts. Unfortunately the parts are so far apart that I almost decided to give up on it. It really needed to be about 100 pages shorter and a lot tighter in the narrative. A real shame.