Science Thriller

Dual (or multiple) interwoven time lines seem pretty popular in current successful novels. The Sanctuary, for instance, connects one story plot playing in the early 1700 with one in the early 2000. Raymond Khoury mixes quite a bit of action – shoot outs, kidnappings, hot pursuits – a string of coincidences with an appealing scientific motive. Though the general level of violence and the number of shady characters is rather high the novel also brings up an interesting mix of moral attitudes and scientific ethics.

How far should you go, how far can you go to achieve your goal? Here, questionable scientific experiments, torture, and murder are obviously accepted means to reach the end. On top of that, even the goal is “ethically challenged.” Should one strive to find the cure for death, to prolong one’s life beyond the normal expectations? And, should you share that knowledge?

For this novel does not tell the “usual” quest for a religious artifact or a secret that could shatter the foundations of the Church, it does tell the quest for a vaccine to cure the disease of aging. And prolongevity – doubling, tripling the healthy human life expectancy – raises some serious social and moral questions.

These questions are far more interesting than the novel itself that only cursorily is concerned with them.

Still, The Sanctuary is quite entertaining – even though Khoury’s first novel The Last Templar was a bit more enjoyable and enthralling.

It was time for another science thriller by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child: Thunderhead is set in the Pendergast-universe, though the FBI agent himself does not appear in this novel. The story takes places some time before Cabinet of Curiosities, that is even before the rather ambivalent Diogenes trilogy [1] [2] [3] that was my reason to start reading Preston and Child novels. The only known character (given the timeline of novels) is the journalist Smithback who accompanies an archaeological dig in a remote corner of Utah’s canyon country. The leader of the expedition Nora Kelly will re-appear in later novels, too, one additional character that will be recycled throughout the series.

Thunderhead is less mysterious and less mystic than most other Pendergast novels. The solution to the single seemingly mystic puzzle is almost mundane. Yet, or maybe for this reason, the novel is a very entertaining and absorbing reading.

After having gotten a little disappointed by the last Pendergast novels of the author duo Preston and Child I started to read their non-Pendergast work. Give them a second chance so to speak. And indeed I felt reasonably well entertained. So now, about half a year and one relocation later I read the next book on the Preston and Child shelf (ok, it’s only part of a shelf, one of my to-read shelves). Riptide is more an adventure story than a science thriller. And therefore is already different from the other Preston and Child novels I have read so far. There is a little romance, just a little though. And there are a few violent deaths, yet you never feel like the gore is dripping from the pages. The story is well paced and, of course, all the mysteries have a scientific explanation. All in all the book is quite absorbing.

Consequently, I mostly enjoyed reading it. However, one tiny little thing kept irritating me. The authors refer to their protagonist interchangeably by his first or his last name. There was no clear pattern. It was not like when they were talking about more personal or emotional things that they would switch to the first name or when they wanted to introduce more objectivity they would use his last name. No. Absolutely no pattern. I guess most people would not notice but as I said I felt a bit irritated. It seemed like the authors followed the ill-advised journalists’ / writers’ rule: Do not bore the reader by using the same word twice.

Endlich, denn ich muss gestehen, dass mir der Mysterie-Science Mix der Pendergast-Reihe mittlerweile nicht mehr so gut gefällt wie dies noch bei den ersten beiden Bänden der Pendergastreihe der Fall war, habe ich mal zu einem der Nicht-Pendergast Bücher des Autoren-Duos Preston und Child gegriffen. Mount Dragon thematsisert die Gefahren der Gentechnologie insbesondere aber die Veränderung von menschlichem Erbgut mit Hilfe genmodifizierter Viren und den noch zu wenig erforschten Nebenwirkungen genmodifizierter Produkte für den menschlichen Konsum. Nebenbei gibt es noch ein wenig Schatzsuche, Identitätsfindung und persönliche Streitigkeiten, leicht übertriebenes Heldentum und etwas Technikspielerei, die eigentlich nichts mit dem Plot und den Figuren zu tun hat.

Wie anfangs erwähnt, ist dieses Buch in meinen Augen eine ganze Ecke besser als die letzten Pendergast Bücher, die ich gelesen habe. Damit ist Mount Dragon eindeutig als spannend zu bezeichnen und durchaus zu empfehlen.