Solstice [Unknown Binding]

David Hewson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2000

A CIA chief and a brilliant scientist join forces to thwart the plans of techno-activists who attempt to use a giant solar ray to end the world so that civilization can begin again, as the new millennium approaches. 40,000 first printing

Product Details

• Unknown Binding
• Publisher: Warner Books Inc (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446913030
• ISBN-13: 978-0446913034
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

More About the Author

David Hewson's novels have been translated into a wide range of languages, from Italian to Japanese, and his debut work, Semana Santa, set in Holy Week Spain, was filmed with Mira Sorvino. Dante's Numbers is his thirteenth published novel.

David was born in Yorkshire in 1953 and left school at the age of seventeen to work as a cub reporter on one of the smallest evening newspapers in the country in Scarborough. Eight years later he was a staff reporter on The Times in London, covering news, business and latterly working as arts correspondent. He worked on the launch of the Independent and was a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times for a decade before giving up journalism entirely in 2005 to focus on writing fiction.

Semana Santa won the WH Smith Fresh Talent award for one of the best debut novels of the year in 1996 and was later made into a movie starring Mira Sorvino and Olivier Martinez. Four standalone works followed before A Season for the Dead, the first in a series set in Italy. The seventh Roman novel featuring Nic Costa and his colleagues, Dante's Numbers, appeared in October 2008. At the end of 2006 he signed renewed contracts with Pan Macmillan in the UK and Bantam Dell in the US to extend the series to nine books, running to 2012. The titles are published in numerous languages around the world including Chinese and Japanese... and Italian.

He has featured regularly on the speaker lists of leading international book events, including the Melbourne and Ottawa writers' festivals, the Harrogate Crime Festival, Thrillerfest, Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime. He has taught at writing schools around the world and is a regular faculty member for the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, California, where he has worked alongside writers such as Martin Cruz Smith and Michael Connelly.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SOLSTICE MANIA, June 16, 2005

By 

Sir (parallel universe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solstice (Hardcover)

If you enjoy great science fiction novels you'll love SOLSTICE.
The author has developed a modern day Sci-fi Adventure you can't put down. This story is filled with vibrant descriptions of advanced technology and story twists as it unfolds. The pages will disappear as you read it, trust me. Here is just a bit, but, not enough to ruin it for you. His SunDog weapon ranks right up there with "The Borg", "Gateway (Heechee Saga)" by by Frederik Pohl, and works by Maurice Cotterell.
{Note to author} Please do another Sci-fi Tek, dripping lightning ball, SOLSTICE MANIA book :)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars So disastrous it's hard to know where to begin, November 28, 2006

By 

Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solstice (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the worst type of science fiction - recycled plot (evil folks use secret weapon to effect sun & temperature), incredibly bad characters (not a soul is memorable or realistic from the black GOP President to the sunspot scientist to the crazy villian), horrible dialogue (written in "bookese" - that language that only those in bad novels speak). The structure is hap-hazard as it jumps from DC to Siberia to science labs to military bases without a shred of coherence.

I mean, this thing is 530 pages long!!! Now, that statement should be followed with caveats - the print is VERY large and there are 59 chapters with wide areas of blank space. But the real problem is that at least 3/4 of the book is pure drivel with the usual fallacies books of this type have. Someone with evil intentions uses a secret weapon for their own purposes, thus outwitting the entire spy and intelligence folks. Hard-working scientific folk and a few unselfish public servants struggle to save the world from disaster. In fact, it's almost like a James Bond movie except without the witty dialogue, hot babes, fancy gadgets and polished effect. There is no "hero" or "heroine" as such. Instead we get a ridiculously long parade of nonentities that come and go at will with all the authenticity of a Hollywood marriage. Needless to say, this one rates an F-.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, August 8, 2006

By 

L. Geatches - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Solstice (Hardcover)

Having just finished this novel, my overall impression is disappointment. It started off with a lot of promise but quickly deteriorated. If Hewson had stuck with a story of just the damage that could be caused by heightened sunspot activity, it could have been not only credible, but fascinating. However, the eco-terrorism angle (carried out by a hippy-like commune called "The Family", no less) seemed so preposterous, I found myself barely scanning the sections dealing with their terminally ill (yet still sex-crazed?) genius leader, Charley. Worse yet, was the dialog. It was as bad as it gets. Many of the statements throughout the book made absolutely no semantic sense to me, yet the characters participating in the conversations got their gist perfectly. I wondered initially what I was missing (or if they may have been communicating telepathically). Unfortunately, it didn't take me long to realize this book just wasn't very well written. Don't waste your time on this one unless you have nothing else to read.