Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Mount
Dragon by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
Mount Dragon by authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child was published in 1996, their second collaboration. In the vein of Michael Crichton, this technothriller takes existing technology and extrapolates all the horrible places it could go if left unchecked in the hands of madmen.
Two researchers, Guy and Susana are employed by GeneDyne Corporation, stationed at the Mount Dragon facility in New Mexico, and a hormone that's been engineered to prevent the flu goes horribly wrong. The virulent disease that results and spreads rampantly, not surprisingly, could have been prevented. Guy and Susana discover that their predecessor was driven mad by his work on the virus. Other so-called accidents have also occurred and been hushed up in the time since. Only they can stop a planet-wide epidemic from leaving Mount Dragon, but those who own GeneDyne will stop at nothing to continue their experiments. Note that the authors include on their website a final chapter to Mount Dragon that didn't make it into the book.
The inspiration for the story was best described in an interview posted on the authors' website, in which they talked about "genetically-engineered tomatoes, or milk produced from cows that have been given growth hormones... ...things like that are just the tip of the iceberg. ...Imagine 'improving' something like cholera or plague so that it's even more deadly. Or...tweaking diseases so they home in on the hereditary differences of certain groups of people. It's a truly, truly scary thought."
Something I love is that these two authors are always trying to make connections between all their books, regardless of whether they're standalone or series titles. The hacker Mime in Mount Dragon also appears in the Pendergast Series and devices created by GeneDyne are also mentioned there.
If you like nail-breaking suspense stories with intriguing characters set in memorable places, this one has all the ingredients to satisfying your cravings. Personally, I can't get enough of books like these, whether they're written by Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, Andy Weir, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, or these two guys Preston and Child separately or together. If you feel the same, this is one to put on your list of must-reads.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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