Fragment: A Novel [Hardcover]

Warren Fahy (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 16, 2009

In this powerhouse of suspense—as brilliantly imagined as Jurassic Park and The Ruins—scientists have made a startling discovery: a fragment of a lost continent, an island with an ecosystem unlike any they’ve seen before . . . an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards.

The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins . . .

For when they reach the island’s shores, scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years.

Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking than anything humanity has ever encountered: because among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any scientific theory—and must be saved at any cost.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Fahy's imaginative debut puts a fresh spin on the survival-of-prehistoric-beasts theme popularized by Jurassic Park. When members of the cable reality show SeaLife, aboard a ship in the South Pacific, respond to a distress beacon from Henders Island, several of the show's scientists wind up slaughtered by bizarre animals on the remote island. In response, the U.S. government blockades Henders Island to contain the serious biothreat its unique fauna could pose to humanity. The ship's botanist, Nell Duckworth, joins the investigative team, which quickly finds that arthropods on the island have evolved into sophisticated and ferocious life forms. Particularly memorable and frightening are the creatures Nell dubs spigers, which have eight legs and are twice the size of a Bengal tiger. Exciting debates on topics like the role of sexual reproduction in the development of life on Earth provide a sound scientific background. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Fahy’s imaginative debut puts a fresh spin on the survival-of-prehistoric-beasts theme popularized by Jurassic Park.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Fast-paced action adventure with a speculative scientific edge…this debut thriller effectively combines bone-chomping, blood-spurting action-adventure mayhem with intriguing (if improbable) scientific speculation.”—Library Journal

“A perfect read for poolside this summer…Fragment closely follows the patented Michael Crichton style.”—Booklist

“Showcases the talents of a new novelist with a flair for forward-charging narrative. The details seem brilliantly researched, and the observations could be those of a sharp-minded student of biology.”—Dallas Morning News

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (June 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553807536
• ISBN-13: 978-0553807530
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (272 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #738,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

WARREN FAHY is a lifelong science enthusiast who started digging fossils at age eight. He has been a bookseller, editor, journalist, and writer for Rock Star Games' Red Dead Revolver and WowWee Robotics. He is author of FRAGMENT (nominated for a BSFA and an International Thriller Award and published in 17 languages) and the sequel, PANDEMONIUM, from Tor Books.

The science behind Fragment and Pandemonium: http://tinyurl.com/dy9frw6

Rick Kleffel and Alan Cheuse of NPR review Pandemonium: http://bookotron.com/agony/news/2013/04-01-13-podcast.htm#podcast040413

Barb Adams interviews Warren Fahy: http://radioamerikanow.com/?p=6150

Angel Clark interviews Warren Fahy: http://tinyurl.com/c3aj6x5

Pandemonium's backstory: http://inoneeyeouttheother.blogspot.com/2013/04/catching-up-with-warren-fahy.html

Friend the author on FaceBook for daily updates on his research and books: https://www.facebook.com/warren.fahy1

Follow Hender on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HenderTweeting

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 104 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Where have you been all my life, Warren Fahy? April 27, 2009

By Susan Tunis TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

It is hard to find the words to express how much I enjoyed this novel. Arguably it has flaws. I don't care; I LOVED it! Here's hoping this inventive debut is the first of many, many best-sellers from Mr. Fahy!

After a couple of prologues, Fragment opens with an American research ship coming to remote, unexplored Henders Island. The Trident, actually the setting for a semi-educational reality television show, had planned to bypass tiny Henders when an emergency beacon coming from the island turned it around. Botanist Nell Duckworth gets separated from the rest of the landing party when she spies some highly unusual plant life on the beach. The others move on, inland to the jungle. Nothing is like anything these scientists and crew members have ever seen before, and they're broadcasting live as they go. Within steps, all hell breaks lose. There are screams. Cameras drop. There is confusion everywhere. The network breaks the feed. Back stateside and around the world the debate begins: Did you see Sealife? Was that a hoax?

Only one cameraman makes it back to the beach, chased by enormous, eight-legged, red-furred monsters. To Nell, they look like spiders crossed with tigers--spigers. She and Zero, the cameraman, barely escape with their lives. Cut to a few days later... The United States Navy has warships ringing the island. There is a complete media blackout. Agencies ranging from NASA to the U.S. Army have been brought in to get a team of scientists safely onto Henders to study this island ecosystem which diverged from our own evolutionary path more than 250 million years ago.

Does that sound far-fetched to you? If Fahy has a strength, it's taking real science and using it to make the most implausible of plots utterly believable. That's not fair, actually. Mr. Fahy has many strengths, the first of which is a wildly inventive imagination. On Henders he's created an entire world, right here in the midst of our own. Another of his strengths is pacing. I read this novel in a day. From the opening chapter he had me hooked, but as I rapidly approached the dénouement, I literally could not turn the pages fast enough. Fragment started out fast-paced, and just got faster and tenser without ever flagging. As for plotting, yes, some elements of this novel are derivative. Already comparisons to Jurassic Park are flying around, and surely Mr. Fahy owes a huge debt to Michael Crichton, mostly, I'm guessing, for inspiration. He is not retreading the same old territory here. I could guess where some of the plot elements were going, but I could never guess what would happen when we got there. He blew me away every single time.

What are his weaknesses? Well, one is the sheer amount of science he's relaying to his readers. I LIVE for that stuff, but that can't be said of the average lay reader. I think he does as well as anyone, but it's still a lot of science to exposit. The greater weakness is character development. Some of the characters were straight out of central casting, and time and time again, Fahy passed up opportunities to, for instance, make a bad guy more complex and less of a caricature. Most characters were not terribly fleshed out, and some may have acted inconsistently. And do you know what? I don't care. Sure, that one element could have been stronger, but in no way did it take away from my enjoyment of this novel.

If this is fledgling author Fahy's first effort, I can't wait to see his follow-up! Fragment is a wild ride, but more than anything else it is just so much fun!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride... June 23, 2009

By Nancy O VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

What a wild ride of a book! The action begins on a ship, the Trident, which has been chartered by the producer of a reality show called SeaLife. It features a cast of young twenty-something scientists including Nell Duckworth, who wanted to be on the show in the hope of exploring the ecosystem of a mysterious island known as Henders Island out in the middle of the Pacific. She gets her wish as the ship picks up a distress signal from an EPIRB and the captain is asked to go to try to give assistance. All of this, of course, is being filmed. As they get to the island, the cast and a cameraman make their way up to the top, and, as the cameras are rolling, something awful and incredible happens. The footage that is viewed all around the world sparks an incredible controversy around whether or not the whole thing was a hoax. Our government, however, has to see for itself, and only days later Nell and a team of specially-picked scientists are landed on top of the island in vehicles and a lab specially built for NASA. What they discover could alter the course of our world as we know it. I will not, absolutely not, say anything more, because it will kill the suspense for anyone else who might want to read it.

There is a lot of nonstop action in this book, and once I started it, I literally could not put it down. The suspense keeps you going until the end. The characters are a bit stereotypical -- the producer, who doesn't care about anything else but getting the footage, the quirky scientist, the fame-grabbing, pop-culture, vengeful toad of a pseudo-scientist who knows if word gets out about the truth of the island it's all over for his career -- but it's the author's first novel so you can make allowances. Also, some of the dialogue gets a bit clunky at time, but trust me, you'll be so carried away by the action here that you won't mind. Finally, toward the end it gets a bit into the "cutesy" range that normally kills a book for me, but considering the book as a whole, it's awesome. There is a lot of scientific jargon here, but it's easy to understand once you slow down and read carefully. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know if it's accurate, but I was more interested in the action anyway.

All in all, this is a fun read that raises some serious environmental issues. As noted, it is the author's first novel, and if he keeps writing like this, he will gain a lot of followers. I'd definitely recommend it to people who like science fiction, or to those who read books like Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Suspense, action, and mystery will keep you turning the pages May 9, 2009

By Jamie R. Wilson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The idea of a lost island that has been left untouched by the rest of earth for billions of years is what drew me to this book in the first place. I was hoping that it wouldn't be another Jurassic Park -- and it wasn't.

"Fragment" doesn't take long to get the action started and once it starts it doesn't really stop. Suspense hangs over every chapter and there is an urgent dark foreboding that makes the story feel like a countdown to very bad things to come. I was hooked.

Fahy does a pretty good job of explaining the science by weaving it into the story, though there were a few times when I felt like there was a little too much scientific explanation when I really just wanted to see what was going to happen next. I did, however, love that Fahy doesn't leave unexplained plot holes. Things that didn't quite make sense or seemed too coincidental at first were explained later on, putting to rest a few nagging questions I had (such as how an island like this could go unnoticed and unexplored for so long given satellite technology).

This is a great book and I think fans of Michael Crichton's work will like Warren Fahy's work. I'm anxious to see what he has in store for us next.