Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S.
Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker.
Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. This sphere's as lightweight as a balloon floating up and away but the ascent is swift, smooth, and loads of fun.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Norman and Beth soon figure out that "Jerry" is really Adams, who's been empowered by the sphere to make nightmares come true but when they knock him out, the attacks continue, setting up Crichton's final conjuror's cache of tricks and twists, and a pleasingly upbeat ending. Adams finds his way into the sphere after he emerges, it starts communicating via the habitat's computer, claiming to be hosted by an alien named "Jerry." Cute? Not when "Jerry" takes credit for the deadly jellyfish and giant squid that attack the habitat, killing all but Adams, Beth, and Norman. All this is intriguing stuff, but without much tension so Crichton dusts off an old ploy he isolates his characters by whipping up a typhoon that cuts off surface aid, and then transforms the sphere into a Pandora's box of horrors. From there, the band explores the spaceship-which they deduce is an earth ship that traveled here from the future via a black hole-and find the sphere: a 30-foot wide hollow silver ball, clearly an alien artifact. After a shocking debriefing-they're told about the alien ship lying 1000 feet below the waves-the five descend by minisub to a deep-sea habitat. Johnson is whisked off by the Navy to the South Seas along with five other scientists, most notably young black math-whiz Harold Adams and pretty zoologist Beth Halpern. Reflecting his own march into middle-age, Crichton here offers his oldest hero yet, 53-year-old psychologist Norman Johnson, expert in the embryonic field of alien contact. But this spirited tale of a science team sent to explore a spaceship found on the Pacific floor does engross via its rich seeding of techno/oceanic lore and a happy plot that bounces merrily along from one surprise to the next. fast-paced and engaging."-People "A very scary read."-Entertainment Weekly "Action-packed."-New York Daily News "An edge-of-the-seat tale."-St.A cotton-candy science thriller, Crichton's first novel in seven years matches neither the hardcore suspense nor the wit of his The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, or Congo. There are rumors that something has survived.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Fast and gripping."-The Washington Post Book World It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end-the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public. From the author of Timeline, Sphere, and Congo comes the sequel to the smash-hit Jurassic Park, a thriller that's been millions of years in the making.