Fun quick read. Artie is on the run from a dark conspiracy. He faces constant danger as people around him die. He finds there is no one he can trust. ( )

Okay, but not as good as I was hoping. ( )

The main character discovers the existence of Old People, a 35,000-year-old cousin species of man with the ability to share racial memories and control the thoughts and actions of others, living among us and waging a secret war against us, with some of his closest friends numbered among them. An interesting storyline, but a muddled, ill-developed plot and such thinly drawn characters that it's difficult to remember who's who make this novel substandard. ( )

Casual misogyny, unnecessary and continuous infodumps, preachy tone, lousy wordcraft, and a truly hackneyed, telegraphed plot with stale, one-dimensional characters and foreshadowing you can see from Alpha Centauri.It all adds up to a truly AWFUL book. I only kept reading because it's what I had at the gym, and I was honestly hoping someone would kill the main character in a particularly squishy way.No, really, this book was awful. The women were all either heartless bitches, sex toys, or nags - or a combination of the above - and seemed only to be there to be toys for the men in one way or another. The central mystery was...not a mystery. You could tell exactly what was going to happen starting on page, oh, 35 or so. The writing was slipshod and clumsy. The continual infodumps about ecological problems were poorly integrated, and quite grating. Did I mention the random appearance of a Saviour Figure at the end, with no lead-up and no explanation? Just...random saviour tossed in there, as though to make up for the cliched and/or offensive characterizations elsewhere in the book.Yeah.Simply awful. Save yourself the pain and do not bother reading this. ( )

The second scifi book I've read in a row about incipient environmental disaster coupled with secret incarnated Buddhas (the first was "Fifty Degrees Below" by Kim Stanley Robinson). Wow, must be something in the air (pun intended). Dr Lawrence Shea is murdered on his way to meet with a group of friends in San Francisco. Two of those friends - Artie Banks, a television newsman, and Mitch Levin, a psychiatrist, decide to investigate. Soon others in their group, "The Suicide Club" get picked off. It turns out that a species of man other than homo sapiens has survived, and is out to re-take the earth, since our species is wrecking it. But these "people" look just like us, so everyone is a suspect. This book was not even as scientifically respectable as Fifty Degrees Below, but compares in terms of environmental breast-beating taking precedence over plot. I'd recommend skipping the book and sending the money saved to the National Wildlife Foundation. (JAF)