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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Monday, January 01, 2007

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.

4 comments:

Paste said...

Happy New Year Cyberkitten. I wonder who you really are? (And I still can't comment without using blogger).

CyberKitten said...

Happy New Year Dave......

Who are any of us really.....? [chuckle].

Am working on the non-Blogger thing. But it always takes me ages to get things done. It's always a good idea to be patient around me.. [grin].

Hope that you & yours had a good Christmas.

Jewish Atheist said...

I too really liked parts of Darwin's Radio and was disappointed in others. Can you recommend books like the good part without the bad part? :-) Either from Bear or others.

CyberKitten said...

JA - I'll make a list and post it in a few days...