Customer Reviews

Abduction

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(37)
1 star:		(80)

 

 

Having read all of Robin Cook's books, I expected another wonderful read filled with suspense and explicit character development. This book failed those tests. The storyline was original, but halfway through the book, I found myself wondering why Cook failed to expond more on the questionable behaivor of his characters. The story could have gone a long way, but I found myself anxious to finish and get it over with. I recently read both suspense books by James Rollins and found those to be fantastic

When a crew of oceanographers receive a mysterious transmission, they are led to a discovery beyond all imagination...a world far beneath the ocean's surface.

Amazed with their finding, the crew is quick to make friends with the undersea people, and adapt to the customs of this civilization (including making love; which consists of hand cream and hand touching, and never having to work since each person has a work clone).

The crew believes what they learn will change what we know on earth...but at what price?

What is this, you ask? The latest thriller from bestselling MEDICAL THRILLER author, Robin Cook.

"Abduction" is a straight to paperback original novel, and easily one of the silliest book's of the year.

I am still shocked that this book is written by Robin Cook! I have been a fan of Mr. Cook's previous novels, and this book is a serious disappointment. It seems MANY authors are trying to broaden the scope of their writing, unfortunately, they are NOT succeeding. PLEASE go back to writing medical thrillers.

The book earned one star because the first couple of chapters were interesting, other than that it is totally un-readable. Avoid this book, and wait for his next hardcover!

Nick Gonnella

This book is appallingly bad. The plot, such as it is, is risible. The characters are cardboard. The dialogue is excruciating. The scientific accuracy is lacking. The writing is terrible.

Even worse, editing and proofing are absent. Proofing would have picked up on the use of 'base' for musical bass, or 'foolhearty' for foolhardy in my US mass paperback edition of November 2000. Or the incomplete sentences with missing words. (Despite waving the title 'Dr' around a lot, the author doesn't appear to be particularly literate.) Any editor would have rejected this from a slushpile.

Worst of all, the lazy throwaway ending to the book is a lame reference to the author having been to Harvard. It's presumably a joke - and
the joke is on the reader who has gotten that far. It is tempting to make comparisons with Michael Crichton's 'Sphere' - the worst of Crichton's books that I've yet read, also set undersea - but Sphere was, for all its faults, far better written.

Jeffrey Archer writes better than this. Heck, L. Ron Hubbard has written better stuff than this. And he was probably dead at the time.

I will never read another Robin Cook novel. I urge you to do the same.

This is the first Robin Cook book I've ever read (listened to, really). I know he's better known for his medical stories and based on this "science fiction" story, he should get back to his forte. This book is poor on every count. All the characters are idiots. If they weren't, the story couldn't have been written at all. Somehow the 5 main characters have made it through their lives with reading a single science fiction book, watching a single science fiction movie or TV show, or even knowing anyone who has. Otherwise they would have seen every trite plot point coming 50 pages away. There isn't a single original thought in the entire book. Really, I mean it. And then, in the middle of this amazingly juvenile book, he drops random polysyllabic words as though to say, "see, I haven't lost my perspicacity!"

Based on his reputation, I'm sure some of his books are great. Too bad this isn't one of them.

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. The characters are annoying and so very stupid. This seems as if it was written for 4th graders.Do not, under any circumstance, buy, read or listen to this garbage. What a waste of time!

I am an avid reader of Robin Cook's novels. They are the type that you do not want to "let go". Abduction, however, is a departure from his medical thrillers and a very poor one at that. If you have never read a book by Robin Cook, do not start with this one! Any of his other books is much better. If you have read some of his books, be prepared for a disappointment.

Having never read a Robin Cook novel before, I got sucked in by all the blurbs touting him as a "master of medical fictions". Wow, talk about false advertising! This is 3rd rate science fiction, as written by the Boy in the Bubble. The characters, and I use the term loosely, act and speak like no human beings I've ever met. To use the description "cartoonish" would be an insult to cartoon dialogue writers everywhere. If this were a movie, it would be perfect MST3K grist. But, sadly, it's just a bad book that killed two evenings (and a few brain cells) for me. Thank God I borrowed this from someone, and didn't actually pay for it...

I've read science fiction before so I know about needing to suspend disbelief while reading a story, but this one is absurd. The crew of a submersible and the 2 divers enter the secret world of Interra which exists between the upper & lower oceans of the earth. The Interreans seem advanced, but display some disturbing traits. There is a separate race of creatures which are half human-half machine who do all their work, while the Interreans mostly play. The crew & divers want to return to the surface, but the Interreans don't want people on the surface learning about Interra.

This story is clearly a rewriting of The Hollow Earth by Raymond Bernard from 1976, which was also unbelievable.

As a long time science fiction fan, I found the book poorly written and dreadfully predictable. Cook uses a condescending, didactic style that is clearly oblivious to several generations of development of the genre. (It openly acknowledges the influence of Jules Verne, and is reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lin Carter in places...which would be fine if it were 1936.) Further, I was completely appalled with the occasional gaffes in basic physics. ("Supersonic" trains in a vacuum tunnel?!? OK, that's probably not how he meant it, but it's what he WROTE.)

Run, don't walk away from this one. Back to the medical thrillers, doc.

As a sci-fi short story, this might have worked -- it even has a twilight-zonish ending. But as a full-length novel, it was a big disappointment. I have read every other book by Robin Cook and this was the first one I did not like. Hopefully it will be the last such bomb.

There isn't any real horror in this novel -- unless you consider boredom to be a form of torture. The plot is a hackneyed new-age mish-mash of Brave New World, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the Time Machine (only this time, the good guys went underground, er, undersea.) The characters are shallow and the "science" is utterly ridiculous -- how many times can you say, in essence, "This is so far advanced it's way beyond me..."?

Then there's the lack of good descriptive prose. In Cook's previous books, we can get inside the characters' heads and really FEEL what they are going through. In this book, the plot is carried forward through preachy dialogue and "orientations" that drove me up the wall. Every good science fiction writer knows that the Absolute WORST way to explain things in an alternate world is to have some scientist or tour guide give a lecture.

PLEASE, please, Dr. Cook -- go back to writing medical horror!