Saturday, April 25, 2015

A to Z April: V Reviews - Vanished by T.J. MacGregor/Vitals by Greg Bear

I must admit I was surprised that I didn't have more books that started with V.  But most of the ones I've read actually have been since I've started reviewing.  And some I'd kind of already mentioned with other books by the same author.  A couple I thought about talking about were ones that I feel are already popular and so didn't really need any extra help from me.  So I picked two adult science fiction titles to share today.

First is Vanished by T.J. MacGregor.  I'm guessing I picked the book up because it compared the author to Dean Koontz, who I have mentioned many times before as one of my favorite authors.  I gave it 4 of 5 starts on Goodreads, and here is the blurb from Goodreads:
Hundreds of birds lined his maple trees. In his eighteen years as a country veterinarian, Max Thorn had never seen anything like them. They were watching, waiting until Max's wife, Ellen, left on her morning run. At the edge of their property, she turned to wave and began to fade before his eyes. One minute she was there, the next she had vanished, leaving no trace but a circle of dead foliage and birds.

Presumed guilty of Ellen's murder, Max finds himself on the run, desperate to prove his innocence. But as he soon discovers, his wife's chilling disappearance is not an isolated incident. Across the nation, other strange vanishings have been reported, other mentions of the mysterious birds and scorched earth, and it's clear that nothing will ever be the same again. Now, it will take a man, a woman, and a child to discover the chilling truth, before all hope vanishes. 



Second I chose a book by a more well known author, Greg Bear, and that book is Vitals.  I enjoyed Darwin's Radio by the author, and this title was probably one I got as a stripped cover at the bookstore where I work.  It has to do with living forever and the scientific search to find a way to do that.  Here is the blurb from Goodreads:
Hal Cousins is one of a handful of scientists nearing the most sought after discovery in human history: the key to short-circuiting the aging process. Fueled by a wealth of research, an overdose of self-confidence, and the money of influential patrons to whom he makes outrageous promises, Hal experiments with organisms living in the hot thermal plumes in the ocean depths. But as he journeys beneath the sea, his other world is falling apart.

Across the country, scientists are being inexplicably murdered–including Hal’s identical twin brother, who is also working to unlock the key to immortality. Hal himself barely eludes a cold-blooded attack at sea, and when he returns home to Seattle, he finds himself walking into an eerie realm where voices speak to him from the dead . . . where a once-brilliant historian turned crackpot is leading him on a deadly game of hide-and-seek . . . and where the beautiful, rich widow of his twin is more than willing to pick up the pieces of Hal’s life–and take him places he’s never been before.

Suddenly Hal is trapped inside an ever-twisting maze of shocking revelations. For he is not the first person to come close to ending aging forever–and those who came before him will stop at nothing to keep the secret to themselves. Now every person on earth is at risk of being made an unsuspecting player in one man’s spectacular and horrifying master plan.

From the bottom of Russia’s Lake Baikal to a billionaire’s bionic house built into the cliffs of the Washington seashore, from the darkest days of World War II and the reign of Josef Stalin to the capitalist free-for-all that is the United States, Vitals tells an astounding tale of the most unimaginable scientific secret of all–exposed by the quest for immortality itself . . .



Have you read either of these books?  Or either of these authors?  Are you a science fiction fan?  And don't forget to enter my giveaway below!


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