What links a mass grave in the Caucasus; a mummified prehistoric family and a strange disease causing women to miscarry and then spontaneously re-conceive without intercourse? Well, if you read the back cover you'll know; it's that 'Old Devil Evolution' up to his tricks again. And that's it; the only vaguely original part of this 'tense technothriller' is given away on the back page. If you don't read dust covers, don't worry the author repeats it enough times that you can hardly miss it. And after that it's just a question of wadding on while the characters fall in love with one another, have babies, run away from the law, etc. Thanks to Greg Bear's turgid adjective laden prose all this requires over 400 pages. Take the following as a sample;
'He sat with his head in his hands in a pale bleached oak armchair beneath a pastel seascape framed in ash and hung on pleasantly light and neutral stripped wallpaper'.
I guess that the front cover gives it away when it says 'Whatever Bear touches turns epic'!
HarperCollins, 439 pages