I liked this book, a lot. I got the audio version from the library read by Scully herself. She’s very very good, which surprises none of us.
This book takes place in the world, with involvement in Haiti and Tehran and Antarctica. The characters are diverse and Anderson carries their accents with skill and subtlety. They are believable, families worried about each other, teenagers who sound and behave like (brilliant) teenagers, world leaders who are also human beings, mysterious baddies who are not caricatures.
The fantastic sci fi stuff just laid on top of the well written human drama.
The book opens with a strange object, pulled from the ocean floor by chance. The scientist examining it ex-posits for us that the damage on the object resembles the damage that only happens to a meteor upon entering through Earth’s upper atmosphere.
But this mystery object also has a delicate symbol carved into it, with clear tool markings. Yawn, what a long day of being a scientist and bringing mysterious objects up off the ocean’s floor, time for bed. And of course the object is stolen. We don’t see it again for a few hundred pages.
Then we move on to India’s UN Ambassador, walking his amazing daughter to school in New York. And the obligatory assasination attempt, which triggers something in Maanik (the daughter) that cannot be explained just by the trauma of an attempt on her father’s life.
Enter Caitlin O’Hara, a psychologist in New York City who is called in to help Maanik. This is the role I picture Anderson playing in the story, a brilliant woman who actually cares about people and helping to solve the mysterious behaviors of youths around the world.
MCM
