Book Review – ‘Impact’ by Douglas Preston
Book Description:
Wyman Ford is tapped for a secret expedition to Cambodia… to locate the source of strangely beautiful gemstones that do not appear to be of this world.
A brilliant meteor lights up the Maine coast… and two young women borrow a boat and set out for a distant island to find the impact crater.
A scientist at the National Propulsion Facility discovers an inexplicable source of gamma rays in the outer Solar System. He is found decapitated, the data missing.
High resolution NASA images reveal an unnatural feature hidden in the depths of a crater on Mars… and it appears to have been activated.
Sixty hours and counting.
Great book description, right? Sounds like it’s going to be a good suspenseful read – I mean, it’s the stuff of your favorite summer movie – the earth is in danger from an ancient and alien doomsday weapon! WRONG. The book is actually more of a ludicrous comedy hour than nail-biting thriller. Do I sound bitter? Trust me when I say that it doesn’t deliver. At all.
For a ‘thriller’ – the novelist Douglas Preston curiously writes in such a way that I never truly felt ‘thrilled’. There’s a lack of suspense and maybe, it was just that I never really got into any of the characters, but I never particularly felt that the characters or even the Earth was ever in real danger to begin with. You know how there are authors where you’re constantly worried that your favorite character would be killed off? Here, I kinda knew that no one of consequence would end up dying (even though the characters are placed in ‘dangerous’ situations) and that we would end up with a happy ending. I just had no idea how ridiculous and anti-climactic the ending would be.
And talk about two-dimensional characters. The hero Wyman Ford (an ex-CIA agent turned super-investigator) is called in by the President’s science advisor to investigate the source of some very pretty (but radioactive) gemstones. Wyman travels to Cambodia, discovers the mine where the gemstones come from and pretty much acts like Rambo by singlehandedly saving the day. And that’s just the start. As we follow our hero on his quest to learn more about a certain meteoroid that impacted the Earth, we don’t really learn much more about him.
We do end up learning a LOT about a certain private citizen – Abbey Straw – young college drop-out, sucky daughter, waitress and amateur astrophysicist (she’s billed as an amateur astronomer, but actually acts like an astrophysicist) – who gets involved bigtime by discovering the impact crater of the meteoroid that Wyman has been investigating & then by working with Wyman as his assistant. And yes, Abbey is a Mary-Sue of a character as I’ve ever seen. Abbey can do anything! and everything! (Spoiler alert – let’s include outsmarting a professional assassin and saving the Earth to her abilities)
Mark Corso, the newly promoted researcher at the Mars Mapping Orbiter (MMO) project is probably the only believable (and non-supersized) character in the book – at least, he’s believable when he makes his scientific discoveries (i.e. the ancient and alien doomsday weapon). Pity he never got any credit for his troubles…
Which brings me to the comedic aspect – this novel features some of the most stupid villains I have ever met. From Abbey’s drug-addled ex, the most obvious mysterious ‘mole’ working behind the scenes, and finally, one of the worst professional assassins EVER hired to do a hit. This assassin is comedy LOL gold, as we watch him blunder through his assignment. Made me wonder how he got such a storied reputation to begin with, this one is no Jackal, people (if you don’t get the reference, check out Frederick Forsyth’s novel ‘The Day of the Jackal‘)!
This book is by no means one of the worst thrillers I’ve read – but if you’re a fan of Douglas Preston, I suggest that you start off the novel with very low expectations. He has an easy to read writing style, nothing too heavy or mind-taxing. He does have a tendency to get bogged down in details, but on the whole, he doesn’t do a lot of lecturing at the readers (which I’m grateful for).
‘Impact’ by Douglas Preston is available on Amazon as a Hardcover ($12.99), Kindle Edition ($12.99), Paperback and Audio CD ($26.39).
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