Most Helpful Customer Reviews
86 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where have you been all my life, Warren Fahy?, April 27, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (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!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Grand Tradition Continues, June 29, 2009
With sagging ratings, the ocean exploration reality show SeaLife desperately needs a boost before the network cuts their one-year voyage short. What could be better than answering a distress call on a mysterious island? Surrounded by a 700 ft cliff wall, Henders Island is largely inaccessible and its distance from the shipping lanes means very few seafarers have even seen it. But when a live broadcast of the landing shows the cast of the SeaLife eaten alive by the island's flora and fauna, the show is condemned as a hoax. Fortunately for readers, Henders Island is not a hoax. The two-mile wide island contains an ecosystem which has been isolated for hundreds of millions of years - with the resulting evolutionary divergence creating life which might as well be alien. Fearing that Henders Island might be weaponized, the president blockades the island and calls on an elite science team to explore it. What follows is a combination of scientific exploration and adventure which reads more like a missing Michael Crichton book than a debut novel. Warren Fahy handles scientific debate and thrilling chase sequences equally well, while giving us a cast of interesting characters. His greatest accomplishment, though, is bringing fresh ideas to a concept which stretches back to Jules Verne.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fragment is a science-fiction gem!, May 19, 2009
Ever wonder what makes a book a "page-turner"? At times, it's that goading feeling of "Yeah, yeah, now get on with it already." But then there are those books that fill you with exhilaration and a frantic longing to discover what awaits around the next corner, what happens to those marvelous characters you've come to care so much about. Fragment, the scintillating science-fiction thriller by Warren Fahy, is the second sort of page-turner: literally every paragraph will draw you in and propel you along. Even better, when you reach the end, you'll have that feeling of not wanting it to stop, and probably - like I did - you'll flip back to the beginning and start the adventure again. The premise of Fragment is brilliant: a vibrant synthesis of contemporary 24/7 reality TV with time travel to a lost world worthy of Poe, Verne, or Burroughs - except far more frightening. All of the characters, of whatever species, are realized in exacting detail, as is the setting on Henders Island, home to creatures never seen by men (at least none who lived to tell the tale). So skillful is Mr. Fahy's writing that you will find yourself caught up in a movie inside your head, and you'll have the odd sensation of wanting to cover your eyes, yet peeking through your fingers so as not to miss anything. For all this feverish pace, however, there are moments when the author puts forward a fascinating idea that I wanted to pause and grapple with. Better yet, get together with a few bright friends and have a discussion. There is quite a lot of science in this work of fiction, and Mr. Fahy allows the reader to relish it (as do most of his central characters). This book positively exudes a reverence for nature: wide-eyed wonder tempered by respect for reason. Don't listen to those who sell short the reading public by suggesting they'll be put off by all that science stuff, nor to the sneering scientific "skeptics" who will argue over the plausibility: just remember this is Science Fiction in the best sense of both terms. Like all great fiction, this work also raises some truly global moral issues that are fresh and relevant as well as eternal. The human species' place in the cosmos is at the heart of the environmentalist debate. Fragment offers quite a lot of food for thought in this matter (I hope readers and the author will pardon the pun). Above all, I loved the characters in this novel: These are the sort of people that I would like to have as friends . . . and in fact, I do. They view the world as a place to explore, their work as a joy, and the fantastic as possible. Even in the most hopeless-seeming peril, they have the time of their lives. And so will you when you read Fragment.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
