Eric L. Harry

I read about 40% of "Pandora: Outbreak" before going to bed, only to wake up with nightmares. Fortunately it was a weekend so I just turned on the light and finished the book straight through. Now that's effective (and affecting) writing!

Mr. Harry surely exchanges parasite notes with Mira Grant and channels Michael Crighton too, and it seems that he might have read Connie Willis too. "Pandora: Outbreak" may echo Newsflesh, "Doomsday Book", and "Andromeda Strain" but it stands strong in its show more own right.

Emma and Isabel are twins. Emma is a field epidemiologist and Isabel is a neurobiologist. Emma, the bold one, responds to an alert about a disease outbreak in Siberia and is infected with a severe form of viral encephalitis that destroys certain portions of the brain while leaving other parts intact, perhaps even strengthening some skills. The virus spreads from human to human very rapidly and soon sweeps out of Siberia and arrives in the USA.

Mr. Harry is quite good at explaining the disease and what it does, and he has worked out the epidemic timeline pretty well. His characterizations, beyond Emma and Isabel are not as strong as they could be. I found myself not caring about most of the other characters. US President Stoddard, is well presented, though, as an intelligent, educated man who feels deeply for people.

This is the first of a series and although I think I have an inkling about where it is going, I am looking forward to reading the rest of the books to find out if I am right.

I received a review copy of "Pandora: Outbreak" by Eric L. Harry (Rebel Base Books) through NetGalley.com. show less

Utterly ridiculous. Day One: North Korea invades South Korea; completely independently Russia renews a recent war with China by launching tactical nukes; also completely independently there is an (attempted) military coup in Russia but the coup leader mistakes five nuclear weapons fired at Moscow by China (combined with the US military call up because of the Korean situation) as an attack by the US (even though the US are/were allies against China in the recent war) so he launches a nuclear show more attack against US military targets. The US counter-launches against Russian military targets. Day Two: the Russian coup has been put down; the legitimate Russian government and the president agree it was all a mistake, but the US vice president stages a coup of his own -- that's where I gave up. show less

Pandora: Outbreak, the first book of the two book series, gave me nightmares. Unfortunately, this second book is not as vivid. Partially it is that its strict 3 POV format does not sustain suspense. Partially it is the unavoidable similarity between all of these pandemic books and films. Good guys barricade and shoot, bad guys push. There can't be anything new in the mechanics of the story. What's different here is that some of these Infected are surviving and are poised to become productive show more members of an emerging new society. Unfortunately that isn't enough to overcome the handicap of pandemic lookalike saddled with the slow pace inherent in the multi-POV approach.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R283H6XETL3SE3/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_t...

I received a review copy of "Pandora: Contagion" by Eric L. Harry (Rebel Base Books) through NetGalley.com. show less

The story starts with a Harvard psychology professor being recruited by an eccentric multibillionaire genius to come to the advanced technological research base on his private island and examine his secret artificially intelligent supercomputer, which is showing signs of depression, or multiple personalities, or something. So right away, you can see that this book is not exactly free of cliche. And for something that dares to use the word "thriller" in the subtitle, it's extremely dull and show more talky. There is some action at the end -- which I actually found much less interesting than the talkiness -- but for most of the book, the only point seems to be, "Hey, look at this nifty technology!" Admittedly, the technology is pretty nifty. But although the practical applications depicted in the book are ridiculously implausible for the near future, the ideas are all pretty familiar, and I'm fairly sure that I would have found them just as much so in 1996, when the novel was published. Which puts me far ahead of the protagonist, who is so consistently freaked out about absolutely everything that it seems as if she's never watched a science fiction movie or read a speculative magazine article. Or learned anything from her experiences earlier in the story. Come to think of it, I don't believe there's a whole lot of evidence of her supposed expertise in psychology, either.

Despite its flaws, I actually found this surprisingly readable, in a no-real-emotional-investment-required, pick-it-up-and-put-it-down-over-a-busy-holiday way, for the first 250 pages or so. But by about halfway through, I was becoming increasingly bored with its ridiculously extended attempts to build up some supposed big, dark secret. (Which, come to think of it, was probably a good thing, because the secret, when it's finally "explained" at the end, is incredibly, incredibly lame.) By the last 100 pages or so, which is when the theoretically exciting action stuff is happening, I was so bored that I stopped paying much attention to the plot, and just spent my time thinking about how much I'd like to smack the main characters for being deeply annoying and for wasting my time.

Sigh. show less