Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Review: Set sometime in the future - late 21st century perhaps? The world has changed quite a bit. The American farm industry was hard hit by a crop fungus, more or less destroying it. Meanwhile Mexico underwent a politico-religious revival and has become a world superpower - even taking over California, Arizona and part of Texas from the US.
The main character, HD Stark is the top epidemiologist for the CDC. When a strange, very deadly, plague breaks out in Ascension (formally Mexico City), the Mexican government sneaks him across the boarder to help fight the disease.
The setting for the story is very interesting and in fact I had trouble putting the book down for about the first 1/3. But slowly I just lost interest in the book. I think the big thing that had hooked me at the beginning was trying to figure out who was spreading the plague, and why they were doing that. However, I pretty much had that figured out in the first quarter, and had the who confirmed by the middle of the book. After that I realized that I didn't care about any of the characters, I just cared about the mystery. Once that was solved, my interest in the book disappeared.
I was somewhat disappointed by the main character and the antagonist - for people that are supposedly brilliant they both behaved very stupidly at times.
Review: Set sometime in the future - late 21st century perhaps? The world has changed quite a bit. The American farm industry was hard hit by a crop fungus, more or less destroying it. Meanwhile Mexico underwent a politico-religious revival and has become a world superpower - even taking over California, Arizona and part of Texas from the US.
The main character, HD Stark is the top epidemiologist for the CDC. When a strange, very deadly, plague breaks out in Ascension (formally Mexico City), the Mexican government sneaks him across the boarder to help fight the disease.
The setting for the story is very interesting and in fact I had trouble putting the book down for about the first 1/3. But slowly I just lost interest in the book. I think the big thing that had hooked me at the beginning was trying to figure out who was spreading the plague, and why they were doing that. However, I pretty much had that figured out in the first quarter, and had the who confirmed by the middle of the book. After that I realized that I didn't care about any of the characters, I just cared about the mystery. Once that was solved, my interest in the book disappeared.
I was somewhat disappointed by the main character and the antagonist - for people that are supposedly brilliant they both behaved very stupidly at times.
