Mariposa [Hardcover]

Greg Bear (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2009

In an America driven to near bankruptcy with crushing foreign debt, the Talos Corporation stands out as a major success story—training soldiers and security forces from around the world and providing logistics and troops for nearly all branches of the United States government. But Talos has another plan in mind—the destruction of the federal system and constitutional law.

Three FBI agents are all that stands between Talos’s CEO Axel Price and the subversion of our nation. Fouad Al-Husam is working undercover in Lion City, Texas, on the Talos Campus—but he may have just overplayed his hand. Agent William Griffin will engage in a desperate diversion to try to rescue Al-Husam, and the top-secret information he literally carries in his blood.

Rebecca Rose is called into action to partner with an unlikely hero: Nathan Trace, one of a team of four who created and programmed the thinking machines that are about to help Axel Price in his plans for domination. Trace and his colleagues were caught up in a violent incident in the Middle East several years ago, and experienced Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. All of them were forcibly enrolled in a treatment program sponsored by Talos Corporation, code-named Mariposa—which supposedly cured their PTSD. But now they are beginning to notice unexpected side effects. The Mariposa subjects are being liberated from nearly all human emotions and concerns—and all mental limits—to become brilliant sociopaths. They are out of control and they must die.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In bestseller Bear's intriguing near-future thriller, a powerful financier stands ready to seize control of America as the nation teeters on the brink of economic collapse. The Texas-based Talos Corp., helmed by CEO Axel Price, specializes in security technology software and the training of mercenaries. Standing between Price and the downfall of America are a few hardy FBI agents, notably Rebecca Rose, one of the stars of the previous book in the series, Quantico. Besides the nefarious Price, dangers include a supercomputer, Jones Zero, that may or may not be acting on the side of justice, and the fact that Rebecca and others have been used as guinea pigs for a powerful mind- and body-altering drug, Mariposa. Under less capable hands, the extraordinarily complicated plot, numbers of characters and the constant explanations of future technologies might lead to terminal turgidity, but SF veteran Bear keeps everything whizzing right along to the slam-bang conclusion. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

Following Quantico (2007), this second novel in sf veteran Bear’s Rebecca Rose series continues his dystopian, near-future vision of the U.S. and its failing economy. Rebecca Rose returns from an extended vacation to complete the FBI agent team introduced in the earlier book. They’re up against a clever megalomaniac, Axel Price, who is one step away from a takeover of the U.S. government. Under the guise of a medical-treatment program for post-traumatic stress disorder victims, Price is using the code-named Mariposa Project to build a personal army of sociopaths. A fast-moving thriller that posits an absolutely convincing and utterly frightening future. --Elliott Swanson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Vanguard Press; First Edition edition (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593154976
• ISBN-13: 978-1593154974
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #964,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books, spanning thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy, including Blood Music, Eon, The Forge of God, Darwin's Radio, City at the End of Time, and Hull Zero Three. His books have won numerous international prizes, have been translated into more than twenty-two languages, and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Over the last twenty-eight years, he has also served as a consultant for NASA, the U.S. Army, the State Department, the International Food Protection Association, and Homeland Security on matters ranging from privatizing space to food safety, the frontiers of microbiology and genetics, and biological security.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Bear retreads, January 31, 2010

By 

Mark G. Lawrence - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mariposa (Hardcover)

I have just finished reading two Greg Bear books: City at the End of Time, and Mariposa.
Mariposa is the better book; a tightly plotted political thriller. City at the End of Time is just awful: amorphous and bloated, it makes little sense, and the ending provides no satisfaction at all.
The books share a common trait, though; they are both inferior retreads of previous Bear works.
City at tne End of Time is very similar to the his alternate reality fantasy from the 80's about the young wizard. The second book, The Serpent Mage, is about a world whose foundations are fallling apart and need a new creation to be saved. City has basically the same plot, but with a ridiculous many-worlds pseudo-quantum physics underpinning. Just as in Serpent Mage, the fate of the world lies with "breeds" who have unusual and unexpected powers. The old gods in Serpent Mage have the names of the gods of earth, while in City they are called Typhon, Sangmer, et. al.
Mariposa reads like Queen of Angels, with similar plot devices and even some of the same characters.
The themes---about how technology, computers and medicine will unleash new and sometimes dangerous capabilities, are interesting, but Mariposa says nothing that wasn't said better in Queen of Angels.
Also, like Queen of Angels, Mariposa falls apart near the end with a completely unbelievable, operatic weaving together of the storylines in the book.

By itself, Mariposa is not bad. It's just so disappointing to find a talented and interesting writer with nothing new to say. He could have skipped this one and City and we'd all think the better of him.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of complexities, March 5, 2010

By 

Sylvia Wadlington (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mariposa (Hardcover)

Mariposa by Greg Bear is a story laden with complexities. There are a lot of characters of and a lot going on. It's one of those books where you have to mentally keep track of who is where and what's happening. This only adds to the mystery and suspense of the story, allowing you to exercise your brain while enjoying it all. Basically the government is on the verge of financial collapse and the various security agencies are competing against each other for survival. There is also a rogue computer and a hand full of people coping with the fact that the eugenics treatment used to save them is turning some of them into psychopaths. It's like reading four books at the same time, though everything is well connected and the randomness of events keeps the suspense tuned on high throughout the story. The science is especially well handled with real, almost real and yet to come, all seamlessly melded together, leaving you to wonder which things are already developed and what is yet to come.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very fine Greg Bear book, August 11, 2010

By 

AbominatorClassPicketShip (Floating around the Universe looking for trouble.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mariposa (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book because I like Greg Bear's writing and story telling style and this is one of his better recent efforts. I recommend this book to Greg Bear fans and especially fans of the Queen of Angels universe because it is somewhat of a prequel to those books. Many of the themes in Queen of Angels begin to take shape in this book in no uncertain terms, even the characters and institutions from Queen of Angels and Slant are in this book if only in passing. Mariposa lays the ground work for the artificial intelligence, psychological manipulation of society, and futuristic criminal investigative techniques that appear in earlier Bear books with this theme (he has others, try Eon for hard sci-fi).

4 stars may be a little high, but I can't give it 3 stars because it is better than that. Quantico is the pre-cursor to this book so you may want to read that first to know a little more about the characters, but I found Quantico unsatisfying from a sci-fi perspective. Quantico was a near-term future crime story, Mariposa felt more futuristic than that but not at all like the future of Queen of Angels with full A.I. and some space exploration. Mariposa is a solid addition to the Greg Bear collection.