I thought, "Ho hum, another eco-disaster, but Kevin Anderson usually tells a good story... I'll try it."
ILL WIND is anything but ho hum! Now I'm going to see if Anderson, has teamed up with Beason on anything else; they make a good team.
Fast-moving plot, fascinating characters, good science, and the possibility of a hopeful outcome.
From back cover: It's the largest oil spill in history: a crashed supertanker in San Francisco Bay. Desperate to avert environment damage--a PR disaster--the multinational oil company releases an untested 'designer microbe' to break up the spill. An 'oil-eating' microbe,' designed to consume anything made of petrocarbons: oil, gasoline, synthetic fabrics, and of course plastic.
What the company didn't realize is that their microbe propagates through the air. But when every car in the Bay Area turns up with an empty gas tank, they begin to suspect something is terribly wrong.
And when, in just a few days, eveery piece of plastic in the world has dissolved, it's too late...
I really enjoyed this book. It had a great hook from the beginning and kept me interested the whole way through.
This was a quick & fun read, I enjoy post-apocalyptic science fiction and this one was pretty good.
I read this a while ago, when I actually could finish a book, and I didn't take science fiction so seriously. It has kind of a weird ending SPOILER ALERT: LIFE GOES ON, the lesson seems to be that even though all petroleum and all plastics have disappeared overnight, you can still have an awesome rock 'n' roll concert at Altamont Pass, just like the good old days.
I like SciFi and if it is set in the SF Bay Area I'll tend to read it even more. This book is totally plausible. Just in 2007 the Costco Busan hit the Bay Bridge and well...plastic is still around but all the factors to make this book real are here today. So maybe it isn't so scifi after all...except the rail gun!
I don't read much sci-fi, but I LOVED this book! I never read a book twice and I have read it three times. I always thought it would be a great movie.
