Customer Reviews

The Swarm

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I really enjoyed reading The Swarm. It kept me engrossed from start to finish with only one or two slow bits that I still found interesting. The characters are very well written so you can get into their heads. I thought there was plenty of action interspersed throughout the story, but the non-action was just as good. Excellent explanation of the problem at hand and how it was discovered etc.

I will admit this book is quite preachy and bashes America a little bit. Mostly though it slams all of the non-3rd world countries and their populations for what they (we) have done to the planet. However, while I'm sure the author was getting a point across with this, the book is a work of fiction (science fiction at that). He succeeds in making it sound plausible for our destruction to be carried out by our own actions. He obviously writes the president to be George Jr. and writes it like a cartoon version which I can't really object to as the real Bush is a joke.

I'm not personally a tree hugger and am a proud American. I also was not offended by this book in the least. Maybe it hit too close to home for some of the negative reviewers. I would recommend it to anyone.

Frank Schaetzing's "Der Schwarm" has been so immensely popular in Europe because it combines technological (science) fiction with characters who think (and don't constantly just act) and thought provoking passages between the action pages. If you forgive me this comparison, this novel is not for the fast food pizza consumer, but a delicate feast that requires deliberate tasting and chewing.

I was disappointed, yet not suprised by some reviews that complain about volume, style and scarcity of heavy action. Sorry my friends, this ain't AVP or StarWars. I recommend this novel only for the ones amoung you who still like to use the brain they have. You'll love it.

This is the best beach book to come along in a while; if you dare to read it on the beach. It concerns deep ocean threats, but is much more than a common eco-disaster thriller. There are elements of horror, science fiction and thrillers/political intrigue, all mixed together in a briny stew.

I love environmental disaster books, and The Swarm is one of the best. The translation is, for the most part, excellent, and the "Britishisms" are easy to understand. Unfortunately, some typos exist (not very many for an 880 p. novel), in addition to some "unusual phrasings" that show mistranslations. For example, remember the scene in Die Hard 3 when the guy gives himself away by saying "it's raining dogs and cats"? That sort of thing occurs 3-4 times, and should have been caught by the American proofers. There is also some "eco-propaganda", including one 3 p. "insert" that should have been omitted. But this is not the overwhelming kind, and the story flows, at breakneck pace, with only a couple of small bumps.

All-in-all, this was one pleasurable read, and my only regret is that there aren't another 15-20 novels by Schatzing. Maybe this will open the door to translating some of the new German horror writers (hint hint).

Pegleg

The Swarm is massive, and large parts of it are really good. I picked it up at random in a bookshop, opened it and found that my country, Norway, was being devastated in there. This is usually a quiet corner of the world, so I figured I had better take a closer look at what on earth was going on inside that book.

Turns out there are forces we, the people of the Earth, do not control, and the hard earned moral of the story is that we'd better behave, or we might be thrown off the planet.

The build-up is really good, with lots of strange things happening that are explained semi-scientifically, but not so complicated that I couldn't follow it. Then there's an action movie bit, and in the end it's all kind of falling apart, with lots of unexplained bits, and not something that I would be inclined to mistake for realism. Too bad, because this could be a good sci-fi story. Instead it's just an average ecological thriller.

The translation must have been done really fast. A lot of the German language shines through, and that's not necessarily a good thing. Some embarrassing spelling mistakes annoy me. If a book sells two million copies in one language, they should be able to afford a couple more proofreaders in the next language than they actually used.

I like the flow in the writing, but there are a bit too many clichés in there. The US President has a ridiculously religious attitude towards everything, and stereotypes in general abound. "His partner was a small Frenchman with bushy eyebrows and a very large nose." Oh, please.

Some knowledge about genetics, chemistry and bacterias is likely to increase the reader's satisfaction with the book. (How often do you hear that about a book that sell millions?)

Viel vergnügen!

This Eco-thriller about nature striking back against mankind in the form of oceanic creatures that start becoming agressive, setting off chain reactions under the sea beyond imagination, is one of my all-time favorites. I can't comment about the English translation, but the German original is spellbinding, disturbing and possesses an amazing degree of verisimilitude that is rare for something that could be called Science Fiction.

I have stayed up late at night during stressful work weeks to read this book which never feels long. I have also recommended it to multiple friends of all age groups and all have loved it.

A must read!!!

Yeah, guess what, I just reread it. Actually, I gave my copy away and had my daughter send her English copy over to me for a re-read. I was absolutely floored by this book, which is so good I read all eight hundred and something pages both times in four days. There is just so much interesting information in here that it can be read over and over. It's kind of like watching the best bits of the National Geographic channel with no commercials. It is absolutely mesmerizing.

What its about. I don't think any other reviewer actually mentioned this. What the book is about is a superior intelligence existing since time immemorial on earth...a sort of hive mind consisting of microbes and inhabiting the oceans and seas. It is everywhere, knows everything and forgets nothing. And humans have become a plague polluting its environment. And it decides to fight back and get rid of this thing. So the book is about the discovery of this entity and(well, of course, politics rears its ugly head) how to contact it and what to do about all the damage it is causing to humans.

There is so much interesting information in this book that it becomes an obsessive read. As well, the main characters are very well developed, not just card board figures functioning in the midst of a lot of scientific jargon.

Yes, this is an eco-thriller, I guess, but so packed with information that I, at least, couldn't put it down through two readings. And, it asks quite a few philosophical questions about humans and their place on this planet and in the universe. I recommend this book absolutely. As a reader who reads three or four books a week, running into something like this is stupendous. Books like this, filled with such a wealth of information and so many intense ideas are very rare indeed.

I don't think there is any other way of saying this...

The Swarm, by Frank Schatzing, is for the intelligent sci-fi/adventure/mystery novel reader.

The less intelligent will quickly become bored with the detailed explanations of marine biology, physics, AI, SETI, and marine exploration techniques. The rest of you will find it fascinating how Schatzing weaves these fields together in one heck of a yarn.

The less disciplined and easily entertained will be bored with the pace. The rest of you will wonder how you can still be at the 500 page mark and anticipating even more of a build-up in the story.

The lazy will not read it.

The rest of you, enjoy!

The action, the dialogue,... the science! How will Schatzing's world be different in another 10, 50, or 100 years? How many copycat novels will Schatzing's ideas spawn?

I understand a movie is in the works. Please, please, put Frank Schratzing on the creative production team!

It goes without saying that a 900 page books is going to have great character development. How could it not. A lot of the 900 pages is devouted to a few of the main characters lives. And it's a good thing too, because the cast is huge and I would have never remembered who was who otherwise. At the same time, some of the minor characters got totally lost in the shuffle and I couldn't remember if I'd seen them prior.

And the plot...what a plot. It's as immense as the book. A very original end of the world scenario. From armies of poison toting crabs to brute force attacks by conglomerates of whales (varied species working together) the book kept me turning pages. A small complaint is that for all the pages in the book, I longed for a little more action. Of course, when the action came it was of gargantuam proportions, so the wait almost always paid off.

So why not five stars? Though the book should be long, I do think it's a little to long at 900 pages. I think a lot of techincal details (I skipped several sections containing info I really didn't need to believe or enjoy the story---they only slowed things down) muddled the story some and the book could probably lose 200 pages without sacrificing too much story or character development. It would have been impossible to put down had the action been more compressed. My other complaint is that seemingly out of no where, the author inserts an anti-Christian rant that has absolutely nothing to do with the novel. It hadn't been a theme throughout. It just appeared, out of the blue, as though someone had taken a few pages from The Last Templar and inserted them in The Swarm. It totally pulled me out of the book.

That said, this is an amazing and bold story that I've been recomending to others since I finished reading it. Most look at the size of the book and say, "no thanks" but they're missing out.

-- Jeremy Robinson, author of Pulse (A Chess Team Adventure) and Kronos

I have red the German original and do not comment on the English edition. If it really has so many grammatical errors and typos as it is reported, then this would really be a pity.

The novel was the most exciting and interesting read I have had since several years. The characters are well-drawn, and complex. The scientific explanations are well written to be understood by outsiders, and most of that stuff is real. What has been criticised by one reviewer as "preaching" on the last pages, actually is the fourth and last part of the book, describing the change of attitude of an individual's human mind that enters a completely unknown space, and prepares to contact a completeley different kind of intelligence whose nature escapes human terms and concepts - the way Schätzing describes this may be less spectacular than a laserlight show by ILM or the landing of the UFO in "Close Encounter", and more oriented towards mind and philosophy, but I found it to be one of the best and most convincing parts of the book. It makes you think.

Best pick for holidays (lock you partner in the cellar meanwhile).

Being a German I want to answer the biased criticism of Mr Falcone, complaining about the "anti-Americanism" of the author. There is certainly a good ammount of criticism of man's way to handle the ressources of the Earth, and to abuse the environment. despite that, the simple truth is that the (very huge) band of characters is international, and there are Americans, too. And yes, those characters that help the negative pole in this personal arrangement, the female "bad guy", in the end don't come off too well (while most of the "good guys" don'T make it, too). But that an American figure was choosen for the negative figure has a simple reason: America is the only nation that could provide the ammount of technology and hardware the setting of the story demanded. Thus it all is under American command. The military exploration vessel that is scene of the later stages of the book is under command of a female navy opfficer that shares striking similiarities with Condoleeza Rice. So if there is anything "anti" included in this book, then it is "anti-Rice-ism", presented in a very clever and highly ironic way. This Lieutenant Commander Janet Li (close and influential friend of the president, plays piano, cold as a rock, and great ambitions) first is very sympathetic to the reader, not before the last 100 pages all of a sudden this does change - which is a very big surprise for the reader, at least it was for me. Li also somehow violates the mandate given to her, so she is not representing the "official" America anymore, but her own megalomania. Maybe an ironic psycho-game the author is playing here, but it is cleverly done. To condemn this as anti-americanism, anti-Christianism, and brandmark it with even more acid criticism is not so much in correspondence with the content of the book, but tells more about the reviewer who wrote about that book. Nowhere Christian belief issues are attacked, or even mentioned. They simply do not play any role here. According review comments are a little bit far-fetched. If the reviewer I answer to is so easily offended, than I wonder what he might say if he were one of us Germans - who oh so often are depicted as blond, blue-eyed cold-blooded murderers and bad guys in black leather coats in Hollywood movies, or are just good enough to play the part of the bald-headed, monocle-wearing, militaristic, stupid and infantile company idiot behaving ridiculously and speaking in a bizarre and screeching voice, and doing silly things. ;)

This is my favorite book of the year so far: great plot, inspired use of fact and fiction, and a really exciting read. In my view, the scientific and philosophical descriptions are what make this book so interesting. Most of the scenarios (underwater landslides, toxic algae, biological invasions etc) are based on real or at least scientifically plausible situations and the author weaves them into a thrilling and a thought-provoking plot. I come from a science background and I'm really impressed by the translation. Sure, there are some typographical errors (you wouldn't blame the author, so why blame the translator?), but British English is perfect for the book and the technical vocabulary is meticulously researched. In short, a highly readable and informative book for anyone interested in life beneath the surface of the sea.