Customer Reviews

Quantico

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Thrillers are one of my staple diet of mind candy & I grew up reading the hard core, science-oriented SF of the 1960's/70's. Mr. Bear has here combined the two with a fast-paced SF police procedural that I picked up on a Friday night and literally did not set down until I had finished it.

Bear's writing is unmuddied, and his plot is clipped to the exact pace of law enforcement officers under the gun (of time). His characters are amazingly well-fleshed for such a novel.
In a political thriller, it is often difficult to let the reader know which characters are trustworthy, which not, and which are conflicted without stirring so many red herrings into the mix that the reader is unable to enjoy the unfolding of the tale. There is no such problem here.
I also give him credit for his several allusions to the SF masters (for whom such times as ours would undoubtedly have produced many novels like this)and for maintaining the correct balance between too much and not enough science background. He makes the probability of bioterrorism seem too real and too possible and too terrifying to ignore--which is just what a near-future thriller ought to do. A very good job overall.

Bear combines a Crichton-style thriller with some damned good science to scare the pants off readers with this near-future story of bioterror, global politics, and heroic FBI agents. QUANTICO would make--and probably will make--a great movie, with a pace that rockets to the finish, and characters who should pop off the screen. One of Greg Bear's particular talents is to tell a hard science story with characters who live and breathe, and QUANTICO is no exception to the rest of his powerful bibliography. It's not for the faint of heart! But it's a most rewarding read.

To the author's credit, he knows his stuff. This is definitely targeted at people who want intelligent ideas in their novels. I think the writing is pretty good, too, but I have two complaints.

1) The quote on the top of the dust jacket loudly proclaims "an adrenaline-amped thriller that will scare the hell out of you." I would disagree with this. It may have picked up momentum at the end, but the start of the book was definitely plodding. It was interesting, but it hardly "scared the hell out of me."

2) The book is positively dismal in tone. There is no lightness, no optimism. You have to alternate dark and light moods or the book becomes too heavy too enjoy. Maybe that was what the author intended, but if so, it was too depressing for me.

I like the way Mr. Bear develops characters, how he pulls you into the story and builds to a climax and this is a good example... but he lost me at the end... just too Deus Ex for me to suspend belief. Reality would have been more catastrophic. Adding a political vector or a stronger religious vector to the plot (you don't "Star Wars" Mecca without politics) would have added to the story and perhaps made the ending more believeable.

The science was scarily good (except at the end) and the characters believeable. It's a book I'll add to my library for the concepts.

I am not a huge greg bear fan. I have been picking up his books for what must be three decades now. However, to the best of my memory, he has always left me feeling like I was unsatisfied with the reading experience. Quantico in my opinion has some stark problems that hold a light to Bears faults as an author. However, at the same time, I can see Bear attempting to deal with these problems, the only thing is that he just barely does not pull it off.

My main beef with Quantico is Bears story telling. He has a great idea, one that he goes back to again and again in different ways, and that is the notion of humanities end. Here he plays with biological warfare, a strain of Anthrax and a new virus that could possibly wipe out all of humanity. For Bear, he has some fairly interesting protagonists. I could feel the extra effort he made to flesh out the characters this time, and for three quarters of the book, I was totally sucked in. However, Bear uses several characters to tell the story and eventually you get lost following one of at least a half dozen story lines. I think he could have done a better job by just sticking to one character.

If you like Bear, you will enjoy this book. Bear is an idea man and this is a good one. In the hands of a more gifted story teller, this would have been dynamite.

When the right people have to be in the right place at the right time to make the story work, there's a problem. In Greg Bear's Quantico, a new FBI agent happens to be assigned to a case that his father is also working on. Another new agent is sent overseas to track down potential terrorists. The bad guys interact with still another agent. Eventually, they all end up in... Saudi Arabia? Meanwhile, a home-schooled loner develops sophisticated bioweapons, which also end up in the Middle East.

Not riveting, and not inventive. Greg Bear seems to be catering to the patriot crowd here. I hoped for more.

It is a near-future thriller about Bioterror and hints around the edges at the future events in the Mideast, terrorism, the US Intelligence Community and hi-tech National Security gadgets.

It was just okay.

It was really about hi-tech bioterror. Secondary themes were about how the USGOV and the IC isn't doing enough...and is doing too much. And of course, the villain can't be a Muslim.

While some of the gadgetry (Bear is a Science Fiction writer) was interesting (stuff like in this post), most of the characters are cardboard. There is no sense of the importance and scope of 4GW with the importance of messages, information and perceptions.

This author has definitely done his research. It was paced slowly. It had my interest in the beginning and at the end, however, the middle dragged on and on. The ending was anticlimactic. I wish it had gone into greater depth regarding the villians personality and history. This book can barely be classified as Sci-Fi in my opinion. I did enjoy parts of it but would probably not read it if I had to do it over again. That being said, if you are really into terrorism, it would be worth your reading.

This is not Bear's best work but it is entertaining. The subject matter is quite frightening and something to which we should all pay attention.

Great book. It's fun to read with very human characters, lots of political satire and some interesting plot lines... Nice to see a sci-fi author use science in this way.