Ill Wind

Book Review WITH SPOILERS

I was loaned Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason by my brother, who recommended it. I'd read Anderson before, particularly his collaborations with Brian Herbert in the extended Dune series. A quick search shows that he was also the author of "The League of Extroidinary Gentlemen" which was made into a movie. He also wrote a lot of Star Wars books.

This book has a great premise, but it falls flat. There was something both unbelievable and incredibly irritating about the characters. I kept waiting for something very dramatic or very heroic to happen, and it didn't. Some characters had fatal flaws, but kept mucking around. Other characters were full of honor and purpose, but couldn't get their act together. While you could argue that this is a fair description of real life, the result here is a story you can't believe.

The premise is an interesting. I remember hearing about oil eating bacteria years ago as a solution to oil spills years ago. The intersting premise here is what if it gets out of control. They manage to make this very extreme, unbelievable, and not very interesting. Connoisseurs of the end of the world genre know that society breaks down pretty fast. They just sort of gloss over this effect. In all, I didn't care if the noble scientists trying to save the world succeeded, and I didn't believe either their triumphs or setbacks. Too bad. It's worth exploring in better detail later.

Ironically, there was an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay the week I started reading this book, and another in the Black Sea the next week, as well as a minor spill off of Israel, if I remember that last one properly. So it was a timely read, but not at all satisfying.