Review: Year Zero by Jeff Longposted by Chris · August 10, 2008 2:19 PM
After establishing the relationship between them, the scene shifts, and we meet the precocious Miranda - a seventeen year old over the top genius, who offhandedly solves not just one, but several problems in the field of cloning, all in an attempt to put one over on her absent father.
In between these two scenes, we are shown the origins of a worldwide plague. Apparently, some of the “Year Zero” artifacts included vials of blood, and these have been sold to an unscrupulous collector of antiquities, who is searching for the bones of Jesus. One of these artifacts contains a virus that is released when the collector opens the two thousand year old artifact to do genetic mapping on the blood inside.
The description of the plague is interesting. It has some similarities to a zombie infestation - and we all know how much fun THOSE are. Victims lose their ability to think, stop taking care of themselves, and slowly turn transparent. Eventually, they starve to death, but not before infecting everyone that touches them. They don’t show any agressive tendencies, so one wonders how the plague spreads, once the realities of the plague are known.
The population of the world quickly (or is it conveniently?) succumbs to the plague, with Europe and most of Asia depopulated. The descriptions of Nathan Lee’s journeys through a depopulated China and Siberia are haunting. He has a deft touch with the bleak and empty landscape, and Nathan overcomes some difficulties, with only a little deus ex machina to spoil it.
In the United States, the plague is kept mostly at bay by the forces of isolationism - the coasts are closed, and the borders vigorously patrolled - a method of identifying the infected is found, and the government, represented by Miranda’s father, sets up a lab in Los Alamos to identify and eradicate the virus, but they have little or no luck.
When the director of the facility dies, she is replaced by a physically twisted, emotionally crippled researcher named Cavendish, who immediately tosses out all the strictures of scientific research and replaces them with a crash program, cutting corners, encouraging sabotage, and running the place like a high school science fair, complete with politics, sabotage, and juvenile toadying for resources and equipment. And then they start cloning men from the bones found in Jerusalem - and they still have all their memories from when they died - and then one of whom claims to have been Jesus. Yeah, right.
At about this point in the novel, I started feeling a bit cheated. The author had some really interesting concepts, but I the urge to disbelieve the offhanded miracles and horrors just kept piling up. In the end, the novel was disappointing - I had to struggle to finish it. In a good, apocalyptic thriller, the antagonist is the disease itself. In this novel, the antagonist turns out to be nothing more than human nature, and it was done in a very disappointing fashion.
It could have been a really good, tense thriller - all the elements are there. But it fell very flat, with one dimensional characters in lead roles, and several obvious questions left unanswered, or unexplored.
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