I forgot I had read this book before, hate that when that happens. I really enjoy books with monsters or alien ecologies or the like and this had it all. Plus, it had a lot of stupid dessions made by just about all the main characters. At times you just hoped they would die because they would more than deserve it. Oh well, I will admit I do like the author's imagination and plan on reading more of his work in the future. Some will undoubtedly find the novel a fun romp, but I found myself unable to appreciate it. The writing isn't bad, but I find that I want my science fiction to have a bit of real science in it, or at least for it to be built on top of scientific principles, and this book does not fit the bill. Below I describe a bit of what happens in Chapter 1, which, because it happens in the first few pages, is not really a spoiler. I hope this will illustrate what I found frustrating.A group of scientists is at the north pole looking for meteorites. So far so good. Our protagonist is one of them, and he has invented in his garage a hand-held device that, in part, is an instantaneous-reading mass spectrometer. (He's now pushing real science a bit.) He calls it a geospeck (not sure where the extra k came from).With a newly found meteorite, the geospeck says that there are three previously unknown elements in it. This is wrong on a few levels. If there were a group of previously unknown spectral lines detected by a mass spectrometer, there would be no way to know if they came from one or three elements. But on a more fundamental level, there is no place in the periodic table of the elements to put three new elements. We have already discovered all the elements stable enough to exist for more than a few milliseconds.But beyond that, the geospeck also has a way of detecting whether there is life inside a meteorite, and it says the status on this meteorite is undetermined.At this point we find that, rather than wearing the heated cold-weather suits that scientists and oil workers actually wear above the arctic circle, all the scientists are instead wearing bio-hazard suits. One of the scientists trips and bashes his faceplate against the meteorite cracking it. (Why doesn't the suit have an acrylic faceplate instead of glass so that doesn't happen, like real bio-hazard suits?) This leads to him become infected with an alien bio-hazard.If you have a background in science and find authors playing fast-and-loose with the most basic scientific principles annoying, you will likely find you are unable to appreciate this novel. If you like your stories well-researched and as factual as they can be, you may find you are unable to appreciate this novel. If the periodic table and the rest of science never held any fascination for you, you might enjoy it.
What do You think about Beneath (2000)?
Not bad, but the "science" part is a bit thin. Listened to is on Podiocast
—twisted_princess
Very imaginative...like-able characters. Great read if you like sci-fi.
—Fart
This was a fun read about giant monsters and such.
—fashionbarbie
