Book Review - Resonance by A.J. Scudiere
Category Book Review A.J. Scudiere Resonance
So the earth has shifted its magnetic poles every 60 million years (give or take a century or two). It's been 65 million years since the last one. What will be the signs that another shift is imminent? That's the ground that A.J. Scudiere covers in the sci-fi novel Resonance. It's a novel that grabbed my interest early and had me doing the "just one more chapter" routine for a few days.
David Carter is a geologist who runs by his own rules. He is handed some rock samples that are from a dinosaur dig, but they appear to be mismarked based on what he knows about the area. When he finds that they really are correctly marked, it means that he's in a localized spot where the north/south polarity has been reversed. And he thinks he knows where some other hotspots have occurred, but ignored as they didn't fit the expected patterns.
Becky Sorenson is a scientist at a biodiversity lab, and she's found a location by her home where many of the frogs have six legs. After further study, they also have a strange tendency to remain aligned on a magnetic path, much like a compass. She's trying to figure out if this is due to some industrial contamination or perhaps something even more disturbing.
Finally, we have two doctors who have just gone to work for the CDC... Jordan Abellard and Jillian Brookwood. As a team, they've been sent out to investigate a series of deaths that are localized to one specific adult care home. Nothing seems to tie the cases together from a medical standpoint, other than they all wind up dead in a very short period of time after the onset of symptoms. When the same type of outbreak starts occurring in other areas, Abellard and Brookwood know they are on the edge of something that could be even more deadly than AIDS or avian flu. But they aren't getting any closer to finding the answers they need.
Scudiere takes these three plotlines and brings the characters together in a way that allows each of their fields of expertise to contribute to solving the puzzle. When it becomes obvious that each of these locations involves a complete reversal in magnetic polarity, the action picks up in intensity, as the magnetic hotspots are growing at an ever-increasing rate. The last 200 pages or so of the story take a completely unexpected twist that took awhile to understand. But in terms of science fiction, I thought it worked pretty well. Scudiere also does a very nice job with the characters, in terms of making them appear to be real people with real emotions. Considering the book is nearly 500 pages, the pacing maintains itself well, and I never felt the urge to shift into "scan mode" to get past any slow spots.
Scudiere definitely goes on my "would read this author again" list. Which is good, because I'm currently reading Vengeance by the same author right now. :)
So the earth has shifted its magnetic poles every 60 million years (give or take a century or two). It's been 65 million years since the last one. What will be the signs that another shift is imminent? That's the ground that A.J. Scudiere covers in the sci-fi novel Resonance. It's a novel that grabbed my interest early and had me doing the "just one more chapter" routine for a few days.
David Carter is a geologist who runs by his own rules. He is handed some rock samples that are from a dinosaur dig, but they appear to be mismarked based on what he knows about the area. When he finds that they really are correctly marked, it means that he's in a localized spot where the north/south polarity has been reversed. And he thinks he knows where some other hotspots have occurred, but ignored as they didn't fit the expected patterns.
Becky Sorenson is a scientist at a biodiversity lab, and she's found a location by her home where many of the frogs have six legs. After further study, they also have a strange tendency to remain aligned on a magnetic path, much like a compass. She's trying to figure out if this is due to some industrial contamination or perhaps something even more disturbing.
Finally, we have two doctors who have just gone to work for the CDC... Jordan Abellard and Jillian Brookwood. As a team, they've been sent out to investigate a series of deaths that are localized to one specific adult care home. Nothing seems to tie the cases together from a medical standpoint, other than they all wind up dead in a very short period of time after the onset of symptoms. When the same type of outbreak starts occurring in other areas, Abellard and Brookwood know they are on the edge of something that could be even more deadly than AIDS or avian flu. But they aren't getting any closer to finding the answers they need.
Scudiere takes these three plotlines and brings the characters together in a way that allows each of their fields of expertise to contribute to solving the puzzle. When it becomes obvious that each of these locations involves a complete reversal in magnetic polarity, the action picks up in intensity, as the magnetic hotspots are growing at an ever-increasing rate. The last 200 pages or so of the story take a completely unexpected twist that took awhile to understand. But in terms of science fiction, I thought it worked pretty well. Scudiere also does a very nice job with the characters, in terms of making them appear to be real people with real emotions. Considering the book is nearly 500 pages, the pacing maintains itself well, and I never felt the urge to shift into "scan mode" to get past any slow spots.
Scudiere definitely goes on my "would read this author again" list. Which is good, because I'm currently reading Vengeance by the same author right now. :)
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