Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer: Extinction events are nothing new in the sci-fi milieu, but Immortality tackles the subject from a different perspective, injecting thriller action into the scenario of a South American bacteria’s rising threat and the efforts of researcher Mark Freedman to stop it.
Survival efforts begin with a perception of biological evolutionary processes, morphing into the special interests, intentions, and manipulations of human beings.
Imagine the entwined lives of two researchers who fall in love in what is perhaps bad timing, a policewoman whose nightmares portend something more sinister than a force of nature alone, and a series of random attacks that call into question whether humanity is even worth saving.
The power in Immortality lies in the many questions Mark tackles in the course of his research. These move beyond problem-solving and into moral and ethical quandaries. Its second strength (of many) lies in the methodical approach Mark employs to connect the dots of probability to arrive at novel realizations:
It was still a logical assumption that people were drinking this water after it was contaminated and then became infected themselves or was it a logical assumption? The water could have been infected at the same time and from the same source as the people. There were hundreds of documented cases where a spouse or roommate had left town just before the event and had survived. In some cases, moments of air travel time separated survival and death.
The complexity of events that surround his efforts makes for an important distinction between the usual sci-fi focus on science and the intersecting special interests of a thriller. This promises to attract both audiences as the plot moves beyond survival tactics and extinction-level events to probe the underlying influences of nature, humans, and political concerns.
Libraries and readers interested in a story of ecological disaster that evolves into a tale of human strategic failures and success will find Immortality unusually vivid, wide-ranging in its presumptions and shifting directions, and filled with topics that will lend nicely to book club discussions.
Replete with high-octane action, lower-key methodical progressive discoveries, and insights into god-machines, manipulation, and the emergence of kill zones, Immortality takes a doomsday scenario and turns it on end for a powerful reflection about what it means and takes to be a survivor.
It’s highly recommended for readers seeking the thrills of a suspense story, the survival challenges in a doomsday threat, and the personal insights of a cast of characters who harbor different perceptions of what it takes and means to be human.