The Judas Strain
by James Rollins
560 pp. Harper. $7.99
Reviewed by Lindsay Stotts
I’ll happily admit that I’m a sucker for a good adventure thriller. Give me a fictional plague and someone struggling to save the world from it, and I’m a happy reader. (Real plagues need not apply. You won’t see an “I Heart Bubonic Plague” bumper sticker on my car.) Better yet throw some mysterious historical intrigue on top, and you’ve given me the literary equivalent of an ice cream sundae (with none of the pesky calories).
This is exactly what James Rollins delivers in “The Judas Strain”; a three-scoop strawberry and whip cream covered heaping of adventure thriller goodness. Filled with chills and thrills, “The Judas Strain” will have you racing towards its unforgettable conclusion. The novel is much like Rollins’s previous books, which are so structurally similar, that he has become the Dairy Queen of adventure writers, reproducing the same exact yummy literary sundae each time. That’s to say that even though he is writing the same novel over and over, he does it extremely well.
When Dr. Susan Tunis, a marine researcher, her husband and their crew stumble upon the remains of what appears to be a ship wreck in the Indian Ocean while investigating some strange marine mammal behavior, they discover much more than they had bargained for. Meanwhile, the unexpected discovery of a deadly virus on
When a luxury cruise liner is turned into a makeshift hospital for the afflicted sufferers of this mysterious virus dubbed “The Judas Strain,” clues to its unknown origin begin to surface, all pointing towards Marco Polo and his crew. Soon, it’s a race against time to stop a world wide pandemic that could wipe out all the worlds creatures, humans included, unless a cure is discovered quickly.
Seemingly well-researched, “The Judas Strain” comes off with at least an aura of believability. Rollins’s use of historical and scientific fact in the story lends credibility to the plot that leaves the thought lingering, could this really happen? Without this basic level of credibility, the novel would not work, resulting only in a collection of eye-rolling moments of stupidity. Now, that being said, there is also a vast amount of unbelievable events that are more than physically impossible, but hey, it wouldn’t be as exciting if everything was possible, right?
For all the excitement and thrills that “The Judas Strain” provides, the novel does have the previously mentioned downside of being formulaic. If you’ve read Rollins before, you quite literally will know what you are getting here. Having read all of Rollins’s Sigma Force novels, I’ve noticed a distinct formula to all his story lines. First, a normal day turns bad with the discovery of an event or item that will end mankind as we know it. Soon a beautiful woman gets involved with the Sigma Force operatives, and their subsequent adventure leads them all over the world, their lives constantly in peril. Finally, they triumph over the bad guys, and the world is saved. (And it is always a happy little day when the world is saved!) To cap it off, Rollins throws in one little cliff hanger at the very end to leave you anticipating the next book. Unfortunately, this formulaic aspect to Rollins’s novels makes them incredibly predictable. Whether this is ultimately good or bad will depend on whether you are a fan of Rollins or the adventure genre.
All that said, Rollins is a master of the formula, churning out pulse-pounding reads that are fun, exciting and enjoyable distractions. Adventure thrillers are defined by how many thrills-a-minute they can provide, and in this aspect “The Judas Strain” doesn’t disappoint.
Last Word:
Despite being terribly predictable because of the formulaic nature of its story line, “The Judas Strain” still manages to deliver a highly entertaining action-packed story that is nothing less than a fast-paced page-turner that engulfs you and refuses to let you go. Rollins’s inclusion of credible fact-based events and items lends greatly to the overall entertainment factor, making the novel more than an “out there” story. For an entertaining and exciting read, “The Judas Strain” is one tasty ice cream sundae of a novel.
1 comments:
Like you, I am a sucker for a good adventure story. Rollins is much like Cussler, I open the book and find I am 100 pages in before I even look up. I enjoyed this book and look forward to his next.
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