Customer Reviews

Nemesis

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Author Bill Napier's first novel, NEMESIS, features a Scottish astronomer, Dr. Oliver Webb, who is racing against time to find an earth-crossing asteroid that has been deflected by a foreign power to strike and completely destroy North America. After one of Webb's colleagues dies in an unlikely accident, he discovers that the key to the asteroid's identity is cryptically concealed in a 17th century astronomical manuscript penned by a Catholic monk who was accused of heresy. A surprise ending highlights this action-packed thriller. If you like James Rollins' ICE HUNT or Matthew Reilly's CONTEST, then you'll like NEMESIS.

Dr. Bill Napier is an astronomer at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland. He specializes in assessing the hazards of interplanetary comets and asteroids colliding with Earth and has co-authored three non-fiction astronomy books. He was one of the first astronomers to recognize the risk of collisions with extra-terrestrial objects and proposed that these may have been the cause of pre-historical catastrophes. Other novels by Dr. Napier are THE LURE, REVELATION, SHATTERED ICON, and SPLINTERED ICON.

There were many action sequences where the hero, Dr. Webb, has to overcome the odds to just to stay alive, much less solve the puzzle of the killer asteroid. The science that comes out in the novel is authentic and gives some insight into how astronomers learn about the heavens and plot the courses of objects in space. The historical chapters also provide realistic depth to an already interesting story line. Just as you think that the end is near, for the book and the Earth, there is a twist that brings on more action and holds you to the end.

A couple of times in the novel there were errant paragraphs that didn't seem to follow the story at that instant. This was somewhat confusing, and afterward the action picked right back up where it left off. Also, for the poor American yank, there were certain terms that were purely British or Irish with no explanation of what they meant. These were minor issues and didn't reduce my enjoyment of the book.

If you enjoy action-packed stories with a bent to science and history, then you should read NEMESIS.

Nemesis opens with a team of American and European scientists hastily gathered together to foil a Russian plot to decimate the United States using a redirected asteroid.

The scientists are told that they must discover which asteroid is going to hit us and where it is within the next five days. If they fail, the United States will preemptively launch a nuclear first strike against Russia, China and all of the former Soviet states.

So what's the problem with this book? Let me count the ways.

One: You spend the first half of the book wondering "How do we know that there's this mystery asteroid that floating around out there with our name on it?"

Eventually the author does get around to telling us how the US government uncovered this Russian plan. Let's just say it involves a (faked) manned Russian mission to Mars and a cosmonaut singing in the background.

Oh, did I mention the averted White House coup?

Plus, it just doesn't work when the author starts throwing around computer terms (FTP, Linux, firewall, etc) to make the hero sound like he's some kind of l33t tech guy. Sorry, I'm not buying it.

I think a bright elementary school kid could probably write a more believable and entertaining story...

Good story, nice plot twists, but you have to take a bit of a gulp to swallow the basic premise: sometime in the fairly near future, Russia has been re-energized as a threat to the West: it's back to the Cold War days under a hyper-aggressive leader, and US intelligence reports that they have nudged an asteroid's course to crash into America. Oh, those bad Russkies- should we nuke 'em? Problem for the emergency team trying to handle the situation is that the asteroid has not been identified, and there's an awful lot of them out there...and when it is identified, how do you stop it? ("Armageddon" anyone? The book is copyright 1998 and the movie was also 1998, but there doesn't seem to be a connection.) There's a neat twist involving a late medieval manuscript with a "heretic's" observations of stars..and perhaps an asteroid's orbit...and what happened to him. I almost agree with another reviewer who found this the best part of the book! The story of Vicenzo and the cardinals is very well done.

It's worth a read - taut writing and plenty of complex action, double-deceptions everywhere. Lots of astronomy expertise (that is Bill Napier's background) and reasonable forward-guessing about what computers would be like in his future time: he missed out on CDs replacing floppy disks, but was correct about the increased use of Linux.

There are some sloppy errors - the Piper Tomahawk, like most light aircraft, is controlled by a yoke not a joystick: one-way encoding cannot be decrypted by using a key (though his second reference has it right). In the US you don't take an elevator to the first floor, someone landing a helicopter at a private house would not ask if the "back garden" was clear (why would he land in the vegetable patch?), I don't think any house in the US uses "electric fires" for heating. And no American president would be likely to make a comparison to Drake and the Spanish Armada....Then there are the purely British internal references which would mean nothing to the US reader: I don't count these as mistakes, just a consequence of the author's background: Henley, Triffids, Brand's Hatch, and of course the old favorites - cars have boots and bonnets instead of trunks and hoods. So long as it isn't American characters using the terms, these just add an interesting air of oddity. But since so most of the action is set in the US, it might have been worth preparing an Americanized text (not that we really have an equivalent to Henley or the Triffids - are they still on UK TV? thought they were long gone).

Unless you have a doctorate in astrophysics, almost every explanation in this book will be over your head. The characters are so underdeveloped you'd think the author thought giving them names would be more than enough and the premise is ridiculous. When a character dies, it's on par with asking what the weather is outside. No emotion, no depth, and absolutely no imagination. I'm angry at myself for purchasing it.

Scottish astronomer Oliver Webb finds himself plucked from a winter campsite on a remote mountain and whisked off to a U.S./Mexican border government compound. He's been brought there with other scientists to find a way of averting a collision between the Earth and an asteroid. The twist is that authorities believe the asteroid, nicknamed Nemesis, has been nudged into a course change by the Russians. Otherwise it wouldn't be targeting the United States of America.

This is the sort of book that I finish because it holds my interest just well enough to require that. I put it down with disappointment afterward, though, because its final plot twist - which I won't give away in this review - is just so huge that I felt cheated instead of gratifyingly surprised. The writing is competent, although the first half is confusing because the reader doesn't yet have certain information that's needed for that part of the book to make any real sense. The token woman scientist is appropriately beautiful, incredibly competent at just about everything ("I AM WOMAN" might have been written about her...), and she's known as "Judy" while all of her male colleagues are called by their surnames. That, put together with the inexplicably resurrected Cold War driving the plot, gave the whole thing a weirdly old-fashioned feel.

Not my cup of tea, for reasons stated. But it does have plenty of action, lots of techno-babble, and an astronomer-cleric from 400 years ago who's an absolute delight whenever his scenes occur. Vincenzo and his illicit "woman" are the most realistic characters in the whole book.

The Cold War ended with a whimper, but a few decades later the Soviet Union like a humongous Phoenix has returned with the same objective of burying the west. This time the Soviets are more direct in their hostilities; their physicists come up with Project Nemesis, redirecting an asteroid to crash into the United States.

The American government struggles to resume the Cold War mentality, but considers a nuclear retaliatory strike. However the immediate need is to divert Nemesis from its new path with only five days till splashdown kills millions. Scientists from all over the free world have gathered at the Mexican border to abort Nemesis. Physicist Dr. Oliver Webb is assigned finding the projectile before it is too late, but he knows he seeks a grain of sand amidst a desert. Still as the countdown to Armageddon continues, Oliver concludes that clues finding the asteroid is in a four century old document. Once he obtains that manuscript, he believes he can pinpoint Nemesis so that the other team members will be able to complete the mission.

Revising the Soviet threat with two decades more of technology and scientific information would in of itself be a terrific save the world thriller. However, what makes NEMESIS must reading for the thriller crowd is Bill Napier's pull no punches knockout description of the vast devastation a direct hit by an asteroid would do to the earth. That vivid pandemic scenario on top of the action-packed exhilarating tale is mindful of the Willis movie Armageddon, but with more subplots, twists and spins make for a neo-Cold War thriller.

Harriet Klausner

Suppose there was an asteroid hurling on a collision course with Earth. Suppose it is thought that the Russians have somehow nudged this asteroid codenamed Nemesis into its projected meeting with Earth. Suppose, too, that you are Dr. Oliver Webb, one of the world's greatest physicists and you've been shanghaied to a remote area near the Mexican border and told of the impending disaster. And suppose you are given five days to not only identify the wayward asteroid, but commanded to find a solution to the dilemma and thus save America from total annihilation? What would you do? Thus, Bill Napier lays the groundwork for his plot that will take the reader on an adventure that will ultimately crescendo in a surprising climax. Hang on to your bootstraps and enjoy the ride!

Sci-Fi master Arthur C. Clarke dubbed NEMESIS 'the most exciting book I have ever read'. With praise like that, I had to see for myself what Bill Napier's novel was all about. While I don't share Mr. Clarke's sentiment, I did thoroughly enjoy this novel ...that deals with a monster asteroid dubbed Nemesis which seems on target to strike the heart of the United States. To make matters worse, it appears the Russians are seeking to capitalize on this crippling disaster by attaching a nuke to the asteroid. A team of international experts is put together to try to avert this disaster and an ancient Italian manuscript may hold the answers. The problem they discover is that the Russians may not be the only ones seeking to capitalize on these events. A great summer beach read!

I couldn't put this book down! I kept having one obvious (to me) question about what was going on which was eventually answered to my satisfaction by the end.

This book really does pack a lifetime's knowledge into one novel. Napier is writing from his specialty, which lucky for him happens to be something most people are aware of and find interesting. The refreshing part here is that he is capable of actually writing in an appealing, mass-market style, unlike a lot of specialists who attempt to cash-in on their expertise. Also refreshing is the new angle he brings to the over-worked asteroid-threatens-Earth storyline. By having the Russians actually behind the collision opens up a whole new world of possibilities and drama. The only downside to the book is the science & technobabble may be a bit heavy for the average fork-and-spoon operator.