The Gemini Effect

A long-abandoned bioweapon is reactivated by dumb luck and apathy. Within twelve hours, Kansas City is dead, and the plague is spreading in a tide of mutated killer rat monsters. The President must act quickly, but cautiously, while his advisers pull in many directions at once. Cold war bio warfare, rats, plague, KGB sleepers, sexy sexy scientists and dear Lord does anyone in this story have eyes that aren't piercing?

The basic concepts of The Gemini Effect aren't bad, and the self-replicating death rats are creepy as hell even before they start infecting people. Grossart's writing shows signs of academic training, especially when he gives a name in full followed by the acronym in brackets (and since he's talking about GPS it has to be habit,) and as far as I can tell his bio-science is accurate, if wildly speculative. It's the people that are the real problem. Grossart struggles with the show, don't tell concept and backstory is dumped in agonising passages of internal monologue. Oh, and they're all sexy, even though only the bad ones are so unprofessional as to be intentionally sexy.

There is in fact a scene in which the two incredibly stupid ex-KGB sleeper agents who have decided that a plague of unknown origin and potential is a kick-ass time to plunge the world into international communistic revolution attempt to question the captive President. One is being a super-slutty honey trap and the other is puffing on a cigar; subtle they are not. Neither, in all honesty, are they necessary to a narrative about giant, killer plague rats.

This is how you react to the silencer.

Still; they're not alone in being stupid. The War Cabinet apparently fail to realise that when the newly appointed Chief of Staff attaches a silencer to his pistol it indicates an end to regular protocols. The same scene also flags another problem: The Chief of Staff attaches a silencer in seconds to a sidearm I'm pretty sure he ought not to be wearing in the war room (in which, as we know, you can not fight) and then shoots two people with all the disruption of a particularly prissy cat with allergies. I can not count the number of ways in which silencers don't work like that.

Okay, I can; it's two. I'll throw in scoring a perfect headshot against someone trying to push past him for free, and all in all I begin to suspect that while his biology may be wild yet sound, Grossart's weapons knowledge probably comes mostly from first person shooters. This flaw is also particularly egregious when the President moves from conventional weapons to chemical and nuclear options without recourse to the daisy cutter, the fuel-air bomb which not only is designed to deal with situations much like the ones presented, but has besides become a staple of infection thrillers since Outbreak.

Oh; did I mention that the President periodically breaks off to internally monologue about cowardly, rag-headed mullahs cowering in caves and ordering the deaths of innocent Americans just for being Americans? The clash of hyper-patriotism and apocalyptic nihilism in this book is actually kind of weird.

So I figure fuck it. I'll chalk this up to another Kindle First failure and re-read Good Omens instead.