State of Fear Review
MIchael Crichton has a new book out called ‘State of Fear’. Like most of his books I read it very quickly. It’s a real page turner. However, unlike most of his other books, this one sucked. Basically it is a techno-thriller about the thwarting of some eco-terrorists by a group of lawyers led by a scientist turned secret agent. I’m not going to argue the science because there are lots of people way more knowledgeable than me who can do that (check out the links below). I’m going to briefly attack the story and writing and then let it go. The story starts very randomly as the eco-terrorists begin to execute the initial steps needed to carry out the missions, but the story never comes back to tie these first few little episodes to the rest of the story. There is no real resolution to the story either. There are a lot of “bad guys” and we never find out what happens to them. The characters are weak and their reactions to the events are incredibly inaccurate. For example, the lawyers nearly get killed by the terrorists in antarctica and are only saved by luck and then later one of the lawyers and the secret agent are almost killed again, and then later, that same lawyer actually does die for a few minutes but gets CPR and comes alive again. Does this make the lawyers scared? do they care that they have been almost killed at every turn? not really. they just keep on trusting the agent to protect them and continue to run into traps the whole time. It’s ridiculous actually. The book is full of science and stupid characters arguing about science and it got rather boring. I am a fan of michael crichton but this book is one of his worst.
www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
