Sunday, July 6, 2008

Infected


Infected by Scott Sigler was originally published in April, 2008. My hardcover copy is 342 pages. I really loved this book. Sigler has the perfect blend of science fiction, horror, and action. If I wanted to get technical, there are a few minor quibbles I could bring up, but won't. Any book that has me staying up until 2:30 AM to finish because there is no point in trying to sleep until I do finish it, is going to get my highest rating. Hopefully a publisher will re-release Sigler's two previous books from the podcasts he did of them. At this point I am a fan and would definitely purchase them. Trim your fingernails before you start reading and the need to scratch becomes intense. I very highly recommend Infected with a rating of 5.

Synopsis from cover:
Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families.

Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common – they’ve been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.

Meanwhile Perry Dawsey – a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey – awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected.

The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.

Infected is the first major print release from Internet phenom Scott Sigler, whose podcast-only audiobooks have drawn an immense cult following, with more than three million individual episodes downloaded. Now Sigler storms the bookstore shelves with this cinematic, relentlessly paced novel that mixes and matches genres, combining horror, technothriller, and suspense in a heady mix that is equal parts Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Crichton, and Stephen King.

Infected will crawl beneath your skin and leave fresh blood on every page.

Quotes:

"Alida Garcia stumbled through the dense winter woods, blood marking her long path, a bright red comet trail against the blazing white snow." first sentence

"Then the itching started. And not long after, the urge to move north again. No, not just an urge, as it had been before.
The itching made it a mission." pg. 2-3

"It's the Triangles! We have to do something..." pg. 5

"It wasn't the kind of music you'd expect to hear at that volume.
Heavy metal, sure...But not Sinatra....You didn't crank Sinatra so loud it rattled the windows.
I've got you . . . under my skin" pg. 8

"After a journey of unknown distance, unknown time, the next batch of seeds dropped from the atmosphere like microscopic snow, scattering wildly at the tiniest breath of wind. Wave after wave washed through the air. The most recent waves had been close to success, the closest yet, but still hadn't caused the critical mass needed to accomplish the task." pg. 16

"What arrived as a microscopic seed had hijacked the host's body and used the built-in biological processes to create something foreign, in a way far more insidious than even a virus." pg. 24

"It was, in fact, illegal for the CIA to run this op on U.S. soil, but the president wanted Murray to handle it - if it was terrorism, it might require some creative tactics." pg. 33

"His finger rested beside a small lesion, sort of like a gnarled zit.
A gnarled zit with a tiny blue fiber sticking out of it." pg. 51

"You think a bomb is a terror weapon? It's nothing compared to hundreds of Americans going psycho on each other." pg. 66

"There were no Men in Black to save the day....No X-Files agents crashing through his door...." pg. 165

1 comment:

Tammy said...

Just saw your comment on the BookCrazy list :)

Poor Perry - he knew he had violent tendencies and he tried *so* hard. And the things he did to himself so the infection wouldn't take over ::shudders::