STORY: As one editorial put so nicely: "Today the quest is to make machines that would be about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Enter Jack Forman, a recently unemployed writer of predator/prey software, whose nearly absentee wife, Julia, is a bigwig at a tech firm called Xymos. When a car accident hospitalizes Julia, Xymos hires Jack to deal with problems at their desert nanotechnology plant. The techies at this plant have developed nanomachines, smaller than dust specks, which are programmed with Jack's predator/prey software. Not only is a swarm of those nanomachines loose and multiplying, but they appear to be carnivorous."
MY FEEDBACK:
1) SETTING - Silicon Valley is where things originate. Believable and functional for this story. Nevada is another local and it too is necessary and logical. The setting is something most of us can envision and/or relate to.
2) CHARACTERS - Our main protagonist is the image of many men in America today = unemployed by the high-tech field, finding dead ends to job leads and trying to help out in the household between job searches. This character and the rest are easily believable and give us enough sympathy for thier plight that there is a connection. Actions are logical and in character.
3) PLOT - This is where the story lags in my opinion...The reason I don't read Tom Clancy is due to the pages and pages of technical explaination that go into his writing. This book suffers from the same plague of too much exposition. The "conflict"/antagonist isn't very easily explained like in the Jurassic Park books so more pages are needed in order to give the reader a surface understanding of what is going on with the out of control technology. Based on other reviews it appears this is the biggest turn-off for most readers, myself included.
The rest of the story is ok regardless of any formularic plotting involved. The level of suspense is not near that of T-Rex or Raptor for me even though the reality of nano-virus should be more fearsome. IT is almost analogous to give me a live terrorist or show me a facility that manufactures bio-weaponry. The "physical" threat seems more urgent in such cases in my opinion, regardless of how naive or misguided that might be.
4) AUDIOBOOK READING - the reader of the book does a fair job. Descent acting throughout. He does not make use of acting in different voices in order to dramatize the reading more, but it wasn't necessary.
OVERALL - Go and read Timeline by Critchon...it is a much better book. You don't have to waste your time, but any true fan of this author will still probably want to read it just to say they've read everything by him. Good luck.
STORY: As one editorial put so nicely: "Today the quest is to make machines that would be about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Enter Jack Forman, a recently unemployed writer of predator/prey software, whose nearly absentee wife, Julia, is a bigwig at a tech firm called Xymos. When a car accident hospitalizes Julia, Xymos hires Jack to deal with problems at their desert nanotechnology plant. The techies at this plant have developed nanomachines, smaller than dust specks, which are programmed with Jack's predator/prey software. Not only is a swarm of those nanomachines loose and multiplying, but they appear to be carnivorous. "
MY FEEDBACK:
1) SETTING - Silicon Valley is where things originate. Believable and functional for this story. Nevada is another local and it too is necessary and logical. The setting is something most of us can envision and/or relate to. 2) CHARACTERS - Our main protagonist is the image of many men in America today = unemployed by the high-tech field, finding dead ends to job leads and trying to help out in the household between job searches. This character and the rest are easily believable and give us enough sympathy for thier plight that there is a connection. Actions are logical and in character. 3) PLOT - This is where the story lags in my opinion... The reason I don't read Tom Clancy is due to the pages and pages of technical explaination that go into his writing. This book suffers from the same plague of too much exposition. The "conflict"/antagonist isn't very easily explained like in the Jurassic Park books so more pages are needed in order to give the reader a surface understanding of what is going on with the out of control technology. Based on other reviews it appears this is the biggest turn-off for most readers, myself included. The rest of the story is ok regardless of any formularic plotting involved. The level of suspense is not near that of T-Rex or Raptor for me even though the reality of nano-virus should be more fearsome. IT is almost analogous to give me a live terrorist or show me a facility that manufactures bio-weaponry. The "physical" threat seems more urgent in such cases in my opinion, regardless of how naive or misguided that might be. 4) AUDIOBOOK READING - the reader of the book does a fair job. Descent acting throughout. He does not make use of acting in different voices in order to dramatize the reading more, but it wasn't necessary. OVERALL - Go and read Timeline by Critchon... it is a much better book. You don't have to waste your time, but any true fan of this author will still probably want to read it just to say they've read everything by him. Good luck.