Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The real horror is next door to us

Contagious
Scott Sigler

Another day closer to 2010, another late review.

This time, I'm reviewing another of October's reads -- Contagious, the sequel to Infected, which I read in September. Contagious follows our intrepid hero and anti-hero as they seek to stop the impending invasion.

Contagious, like its predecessor, is relentless in its pacing; once you commit to the opening pages (actually, scratch that -- once you read Infected), you won't be able to put this book down until the last page.

Contagious picks up pretty much where Infected left off. Margaret Montoya and Dew Phillips have teamed up with badass Perry Dawsey to stave off the new wave of the invasion. Doing so won't be easy, however -- these aliens are feisty buggers with more than one trick up their sleeves.

The only thing that didn't polish my brass was a few overly-political scenes in which the President and his Cabinet debate how to handle the attack. I also hated how the female Secretary of State was a bleeding-heart liberal who felt that the loss of any innocent life was unconscionable. I consider myself a pretty liberal person, but in the event of any invasion -- alien, zombie, Canadian -- even I say shoot first, ask later. Sorry, Canada.

In a nutshell: Not as awesome as Infected (I actually felt a slight pang in ye olde heart after reading the ending, which was heart-wrenching, albeit utterly appropriate), but pretty awesome nonetheless. In fact, I'm looking up other Sigler titles as I type this. Hello, Ancestor. I'll be seeing you in 2010.

Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6 stars

FTCBS: I purchased Contagious for the Kindle.




2 comments:

Cath said...

Why, oh, why, do intelligent authors have to make their female characters in power extra super feminine to compensate? There's no way Secretary of State Ballsy would give a hoot about a few dead civs. Just once I would like to see a woman politician in a book say something like, "Eh, kill them all," while still looking fab in her killer suit.

Great review!

Anonymous said...

haven't read these but you've got my interest! i'm hoping to score a kindle from santa this year and have a HUGE list of ebooks lined up. i'm adding 'infected' and then maybe 'contagious'! great review, but poor canada!!!