Book Review: The Apocalypse Strain, Jason Parent
Science Fiction: The Apocalypse Strain, Jason Parent
BLOG TOUR August 17, 2020
This novel is amazing. Let’s just skip to the chase, shall we? The book is tight, very inventive, well written, creepy as anything, and I couldn’t stop reading. I am usually a fast reader–but this one truly had me spellbound. It is as good a sci-fi, as good a horror, as good a novel as I have read in some time. Jason Parent blew me away with The Apocalypse Strain.
A joint international project preparing for a Mars voyage has been training in the Siberian tundra. One of their members, Sergei, is still grieving the loss of his daughter when he hears a voice. Her voice. It is coming from underneath the ice. Although he knows this cannot be true, the voice tells him where to bore through the ice.
The stuff they find is taken to a secret Siberian lab, again a joint international project, where it is analyzed and tested. One of the lead researchers is Dr. Clara St. Pierre, a French virologist who has to use a wheelchair due to MS. She and the other researchers nickname one of the viruses “Molly,” a shorter version of the scientific name they’ve given it. What they don’t yet know is that Molly has a mind of her own, and she does not want to remain trapped in a research facility in the cold of Siberia.
What follows is perhaps not surprising: Molly escapes from the sterile clean room and into the larger facility. It would be a rather short and likely boring novel otherwise. But nothing prepared me for the complete and utter disregard Parent has for readers who become fond of his characters. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but I will share that not all of our heroes or villains or neutral third parties escape various unpleasant fates. I was constantly reminded of the Feed novels by Mira Grant (one of the pen names used by Seanan McGuire) while reading this novel: she, too, has the unsettling habit of using major characters in her novels as chum for the badness at hand.
I have not read any Jason Parent novels before this one, a void which I intend to fill as soon as I can. The Apocalypse Strain is terrifying and feels plausible because of the power of Parent’s writing (though perhaps a telepathic microorganism is unlikely). It is horror, science fiction, and thriller all bottled up in one compelling book. I am glad I read it.
Our thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for our copy of this book in exchange for our review. The opinions are strictly those of Scintilla. (Seriously, go read this book!)
Book Review: The Apocalypse Strain, Jason Parent