Impact

This was my first book by Douglas Preston. As a fan of Michael Crichton's work, I was eager to dive into something in a similar vein. I wanted scientific intrigue and a fast-paced adventure, and that was exactly what I got.

The story is packed with scientific concepts that are explained in a such a way that they're easy for laypeople to understand. (Whether the science is accurate, I have no idea, but it all seemed plausible to me.) Preston excels at making complex ideas accessible, and he never forgets that his primary goal is to entertain.

However, the action scenes dragged on a bit too long, particularly in the final third of the book. There was an incredibly drawn-out boat sequence that had me eager to be done with the whole thing show more already. Overall, though, IMPACT is a solid thriller. It’s a great pick for Crichton fans and anyone who enjoys a well-crafted mystery with a touch of the extraterrestrial. Despite some pacing issues in the action scenes, the book is engaging and thought-provoking throughout. show less

When what appears to be a meteor strikes off the coast of Maine, a young woman (Abbey) and her friend set off to find the impact site. Meanwhile, peculiar gemstones are being mined along the border of Cambodia and secret agent Wyman Ford is sent by the U.S. to reveal more details about these gems. Back in the states, a scientist discovers gamma ray emissions that appear to be from Mars. Somehow all of these things relate to one another and Wyman and Abbey join forces to figure it all out.

If you can suspend disbelief a bit, then this may be an enjoyable novel, but I think that's a trademark of Douglas Preston's books. There were portions of it that just seemed a little farfetched, but I've definitely read worse, and I found myself more show more or less pulled in as I continued to read. As a scientific thriller, this was decent enough. show less

I have come to rely on Douglas Preston for thrillers that pique my imagination, and he's done it again with Impact. Preston has teamed Ford with a beguiling amateur who's incredibly short on experience and extremely gifted with intuition and flying by the seat of her pants. It's just the right mix as the two work to find out what's happening on Earth and just how Mars is involved. The only small blight on an otherwise bright reading experience for me was the ending. Preston opted for an optimistic ending, but the cynic in me didn't feel that it would hold up to any sort of scrutiny. However, I do love reading his thrillers!

This 2010 thriller with a sci-fi premise keeps the reader guessing—and turning pages—start to finish. And, what’s with the moon? Our benign companion through space has suffered calamitously in several books I’ve read this year. Not good for us earthlings.
In Impact, Princeton dropout Abbey Straw uses her new telescope to snap a photo of a brilliant meteor coming to ground somewhere in the island-dotted vastness of Muscongus Bay.
“It ruined your picture,” says her friend Jackie, peering over her shoulder.
“Are you kidding? It made the picture!”
The astronomers all guess the meteor landed somewhere in the Atlantic, where it’s lost forever. Abbey, armed with her photo and data from a buoy showing no sea level perturbations show more at the time of the crash, believes it hit an island and she can find it. Selling a meteorite will do a great deal to replenish her empty bank account. If she gets there first.
Meanwhile, the President’s science adviser has sent former CIA agent Wyman Ford to Southeast Asia. He’s to investigate the source of some strange new gems finding their way into circulation up from the seedier layers of the international gem market. Called honeys, they’re beautiful, but laced with deadly radioactivity—Americium 241, an isotope of an element not found in nature. The U.S. government, fearing the stones could be ground down to make a dirty bomb, wants a quick and quiet mission to investigate, not the heavy boots of the Agency. If Ford goes, he goes as a freelance. No cover, no backup.
And, Mark Corso, working on a government-funded Mars observation project visits his former professor and mentor’s home and discovers his body—a murder the police describe as a random robbery-gone-wrong. The dead professor had been obsessed with tantalizing evidence that something on Mars is doing the impossible, emitting gamma rays, and sent Mark classified data and an illegal hard drive to prove it. Mark is determined to follow his lead, even though project managers forbid him to spend time on it.
These three pieces of the story come together, of course. Hidden in the islands, in the jungles of Cambodia, and in a crater on Mars’s moon Deimos, is a literally earth-shattering threat. But before that can be understood, more than one opponent is determined to stop them.
The plot moves along energetically and the characters of Abbey and Ford are engaging and believable. Corso is more than a bit irresponsible and self-satisfied, heedless of consequences. In fact, all the staff at the National Propulsion Facility (modeled on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) are two-dimensional. Preston expertly describes the settings Abbey and Ford must negotiate, whether the Cambodian jungles, the labyrinth of Washington, D.C., science agencies, or the stormy waters of the Atlantic.
This book “dances on the edge of sci-fi but definitely is structured like a contemporary thriller,” says Amy Rogers on the review site ScienceThrillers. I enjoyed it, although at the very end, just when the reader understands the significance of the book’s title, he pulled his punches. He has a new one in the Wyman Ford series (The Kraken Project), and I’d certainly read it, too. show less

I'm not sure why Douglas Preston isn't at least as famous as Dan Brown. I found this to be similar in a lot of ways to Brown, but with far superior writing, more believable science, and more interesting characters. Fast paced with an interesting premise. It's grittier than Brown, with more swearing and violence.

Douglas Preston’s homage to H.G. Wells?

Doug Preston’s latest solo effort starts with a bang—literally—in the form of a meteoroid impact off the coast of Maine. And that’s where the juggling begins. Preston’s juggling three narrative threads. The first involves two young girls who go in search of the fallen meteoroid. They’re after big bucks on Ebay and maybe a little adventure. They get a hell of a lot more than they bargained for.

The second thread involves a researcher with the Mars Mapping Orbiter (MMO) project at the National Propulsion Facility (NPF, but you might as well think JPL). Mark Corso has just been promoted. In fact, he’s taken the position of his disgraced mentor, Jason Freeman, who was fired and then show more murdered in a random home invasion. (Uh huh.) A few days after Dr. Freeman’s death, Mark receives a package with a stolen hard drive full of very classified, very illegal data. He can NOT have this data! He’s got to destroy the thing, forget he ever saw it…. but he can’t help looking to see what’s on it first. And so Mark Corso gets sucked into what may be the biggest, most dangerous scientific discovery of all time. And possibly the biggest cover up.

And finally, the third thread involves our old friend Wyman Ford. (Don’t worry if you haven’t read his previous adventures. This book is essentially a stand alone. There’s not a thing you need to know from previous books that will effect your reading of this one.)
Ford’s a former CIA operative, a freelancer now, and he’s just been offered a job. There have been some very unusual gems showing up for sale in Asia. They’re strikingly beautiful, but notably unlike anything anyone’s seen before. And potentially quite dangerous. Ford is tasked with finding the source of the stones and reporting back. One of the easier assignments he’s taken in recent years. (Uh huh.)

Preston does a good job of keeping all his balls up in the air. This 368-page book has an even 100 chapters. You can do the math. That’s a whole bunch of short, fast-paced chapters. Almost every one of them ends on a hook, making the novel virtually impossible to put down. Preston places his characters in every type of peril you can imagine, from the everyday unpleasantness of a strung out drug addict, to an extraordinary threat to all life on earth. Simply put, Preston goes all out with this one.

Is some of it ridiculous? Sure. I mean, what waitress knows that much about astrophysics? But then again, I’M a college drop-out that knows a hell of a lot about physics. It could happen. Actually, now that I try to think of examples of ridiculousness, they evade me. My point is, read Impact with a sense of fun. Enjoy it as the thrill ride, and the homage to they greats of science fiction, that it is. If you try to pick it apart, you’ll be able to find flaws. Just leave it alone and have a good time. Because this book IS a really good time. You’re going to be holed up inside some snowy weekend this winter. I seriously can’t imagine a more entertaining way to pass the time. show less

I am in general a fan of the Preston/Lincoln books and was interested to see how this solo book would be. I loved the premise and the story itself was a fun read. Some parts were hard to believe like Abbey having attended just 1 or 2 years of college level astronomy classes and being able to do a lot of what she did. Still if you ignore those types of things and just go with the flow this makes an enjoyable read. Abbey is a mouthy young girl who while not the most likeable person you have to start feeling bad for her after she gets herself into one bad situation after another. Ford immediately wins a spot in my heart from his actions early on in the book. I have mixed feelings when we finally find out who the mole at the National show more Propulsion Facility is because it comes as a surprise but almost too much so that it seems a little off base.

The main reason I did not give this book a higher rating is the end was very anti-climatic for me. You have all this great build up and then at the end I was thinking to myself, “Really? That’s how it’s going to end? Kind of lame.” Still it’s a book worth picking up if you are a fan of Preston’s other books. show less