The Rhesus Factor - Book One of the Sanctuary Series [Paperback]

Sonny Whitelaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 21, 2007

[From the author of Stargate: SG-1 - CITY OF THE GODS] The news is full of global warming speculation. The US government is under attack for its stance on greenhouse emissions yet in the background, away from the camera's eye, the real world is in decay. The Rhesus Factor is fiction, but it is up to the reader to determine just how much so, for all the issues are real the research and outcomes are happening now, yet no one seems to notice or care. Have we really reached the point of no return? Coupled with the latest scientific research conducted by Washington experts, this book is closer to fact than we realise and there is very little we can do to change the future.

Product Details

• Paperback: 422 pages
• Publisher: Double Dragon Press (June 21, 2007)
• ASIN: 1554042372
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly blew me away, June 4, 2006

By 

Josh "Josh" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rhesus Factor - Book One of the Sanctuary Series (Paperback)

I bought this book because I really liked the author's Stargate novels. I was expecting something similar but this wasn't science fiction. This was incredibly real, and unbelievably frightening. There's a comment on the jacket cover about events in the novel already happening. The book was published before Hurricane Katrina, and yet there it all is, all spelled out a couple of years before it happened, right down to the failure of state and federal governments to deal with the disaster.

This book isn't about New Orleans, though. That's just one paragraph in one chapter. The Rhesus Factor is about the impact of climate change on us as a global society. It charts the systematic breakdown of our health care system, the closure of hospitals, the failure of insurance companies in the light of increasingly devastating weather events, and the subsequent economic crisis that eventually leads to the dispossession of people right across the country.

But all of that is just the backdrop. The story itself is about a `stealth virus' that's `quietly become a pandemic', a disease that's inside our DNA. And with well-placed quotes, the author lets us know that the chilling fact is that such viruses actually exist. The story is about the inability of the CDC to deal with the pandemic because of the collapsing US public healthcare system, and it very realistically charts the social, economic and political meltdown that follows.

The punch in the stomach comes when you realise that while The Rhesus Factor might be fiction, you only need to pick up a copy of the New York Times or Washington Post and you get a very, very odd feeling that maybe the author had advance copies of these papers before writing the novel. New Orleans is just one example. By the end, you feel like you've been hit with a sledgehammer.

This is not just a book I would recommend; it's a book that I think most everyone should read, because we're all on this ride together. I checked out the website, and it seems that even a politician felt the same way. Read this novel, and then try to sleep.