Outstanding! Almost Michael Crichton!

books:


	• The Cobra Event Richard Preston Ballantine Books, 1998 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 317 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Okay Book

There was some good parts but it seemed to take forever to get into the story. Just when i was getting into the book then another dry spell would be in the next chapter. There is alot of medical terminology that I would get lost in at times and then become uninterested, but over all an okay book if you are willing to wait until at least 1/2 through for it to start picking up.

Terrifying

Chemical and biological warfare is the scariest form of war to me since it is essentially invisible.
While this novel is fiction, it reads as a horrifying alternate reality. Mr.Preston has demonstrated his vast knowledge base on these topics with his nonfiction works.
The villain in this novel is too easy to imagine and this novel resonates with me on a regular basis as the true violent scenario to fear.

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Outstanding! Almost Michael Crichton!

I loved this book for two reasons. The first being the riveting plot. This book dares you to put it down (and then try to sleep at night). The ride, the details, the pacing. This book is a cut above.

My second reason is a bit of thumbing my nose at the publishing industry. This book revels in having NOTHING that the publishing industry demands today. Everything MUST be character driven! Aaaack, that one drives me crazy. Pages and pages of introspection while the story stands still. Preston does nothing of this! His characters are not the focus of the story, and they aren't terribly well developed. Ironically, this makes them much more believable than the standard novel character. I somehow don't think that Richard Preston has sheets and sheets of character outlines with details such as how Tom Cope likes his corn flakes! Preston does more telling than showing, and I wish to thank him for it! All these books filled with contrived ways of getting information across to the reader and past an editor who is just dying to mark something as "telling" rather than "showing." No navel gazing! Thank you Mr. Preston for delivering a book where the story doesn't have to go on pause for twenty pages of introspection every chapter! "Why am I here, does she feel the same way about me as I feel about her?" Baah!

Richard Preston puts the "thrill" in "thriller"!

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Guilty pleasure for science geeks

This book is the result of mixing Silence of the Lambs and The Andromeda Strain.

It's a nice technothriller, but the writing has some serious rough spots. Given that it's Preston's first fiction book those are somewhat forgivable.

It's a guilty pleasure I'd recommend to science geek for some light, very light, reading...

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"A PAGE-TURNER . . . THOROUGHLY FRIGHTENING."
--Newsweek

"ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING."
--The New York Times Book Review

"THIS BOOK SCARED THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF ME. . . . Manages to grab you with the authenticity of its scientific detective work and haunt you with its sheer plausibility."
--Entertainment Weekly

Five days ago, a homeless man on a subway platform died in agony as startled commuters looked on. Yesterday, a teenager started having violent, uncontrollable spasms in art class. Within minutes, she too was dead.

Dr. Alice Austen is a medical pathologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. What she knows is that the two deaths are connected. What she fears is that they are only the beginning. . . .

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