Book review: Fragment by Warren Fahy
This is my second book review and I am only doing the one book this time, a far more sensible idea I think. I finished reading Fragment a few weeks ago but hadn't gotten round to reviewing it yet, so here it goes.
Firstly I will say that this will contain spoilers, so if you have not read the book and plan to I suggest reading it first.
The book follows a group of scientist and a film crew while filming the reality TV show Sea life, they arrive on an unexplored island, called Henders island, in the middle of the South Pacific ocean in hopes of finding new life forms. What they discover is an ecosystem completely different to our own that has remained untouched and evolved differently. The life forms on this island are like nothing seen before but with some elements of creatures we do have, the whole ecosystem is violent with a literal everything eats everything food chain. After several scientists and crew get killed live on TV the US Navy is sent to quarantine the island and stop any transmissions, meanwhile a scientific observation unit has been set up to learn more about the creatures and how everything works. Through various situations and deaths the President of the US makes the decision, after consulting various scientists, that the island should be nuked. However while the clock counts down, while on a rescue mission, a small group discovers intelligent life and endeavour to save it. They smuggle the creatures off the island and after being confronted by the navy and getting a live feed for the world to see the creatures succeed in keeping them alive and free.
The main characters in Fragment are; Nell Duckworth a biologist on Sea life, Zero Monroe a cameraman on Sea life, Geoffrey Binswanger a biologist who gets taken to the island to form the Presidents council, Cynthea Leeds the producer of Sea life, Andy Beesley a scientist on Sea life and Thatcher Redmond a zoologist who gets taken to the island to be on the Presidents council.
Overall I found this book fairly interesting with the island being untouched and containing unseen life, I thought the creatures were amazing and really enjoyed getting to know about them. At one point the book got a little slow going with all the scientific details of the creatures but one I got past that I found that the information was helpful to understand the rest of the story. The characters in the book felt a little flat at times what with the constant fascination at the discoveries and with how often people were being killed or running from being killed. The most interesting by far was Geoffrey as, for a large chunk of the book he was not on the island but is shown having scientific debates regarding evolution and lifespan, when he is on the island he at first refuses to believe nuking the island is the right course of action. However he soon changes his mind when seeing how violent the ecosystem is, until he is part of the group, which includes Nell, Zero, Andy and Thatcher, that discovers the intelligent life and helps get them off the island. The key characters throughout are Nell and Zero, being the only survivors of the initial attack and continuing to survive through several other attacks. Nell makes several discoveries about the ecosystem and creatures while Zero captures a lot of the events on film and also aids in some of Nell's discoveries.
Other than the island being the main 'bad guy' to a certain degree, the character that takes the mantle is Thatcher, from the beginning we discover he is obnoxious and only cares about being successful and rich. When he is taken to the island he too is against the nuking of the island, but more for his own interests and is completely against rescuing the intelligent creatures , attempting to leave them and the rest of the group to die on the island, Thatcher eventually gets his due and is killed by some creatures from the island.
The story line was OK however I found the sudden revelation of these intelligent creatures and them being saved a bit like an add on to give some good from the island, plus it was a small part of the book so felt a little rushed. I feel there could have been less running and screaming throughout and a bit more to the really interesting intelligent life that learned so much in a short period of time and could have been developed more. I mainly feel this way because I felt like this was the most interesting part of the book and it seemed to be going somewhere then they were escaping and soon after the book ended.
As I said, I enjoyed the book but it is not one that I would read again, if you are a fan of scientifically detailed explanations interspersed with lot's of running, screaming and violence on an unexplored island then this is for you, if not maybe give it a miss.
My rating for Fragment is 5/10
Firstly I will say that this will contain spoilers, so if you have not read the book and plan to I suggest reading it first.
The main characters in Fragment are; Nell Duckworth a biologist on Sea life, Zero Monroe a cameraman on Sea life, Geoffrey Binswanger a biologist who gets taken to the island to form the Presidents council, Cynthea Leeds the producer of Sea life, Andy Beesley a scientist on Sea life and Thatcher Redmond a zoologist who gets taken to the island to be on the Presidents council.
Overall I found this book fairly interesting with the island being untouched and containing unseen life, I thought the creatures were amazing and really enjoyed getting to know about them. At one point the book got a little slow going with all the scientific details of the creatures but one I got past that I found that the information was helpful to understand the rest of the story. The characters in the book felt a little flat at times what with the constant fascination at the discoveries and with how often people were being killed or running from being killed. The most interesting by far was Geoffrey as, for a large chunk of the book he was not on the island but is shown having scientific debates regarding evolution and lifespan, when he is on the island he at first refuses to believe nuking the island is the right course of action. However he soon changes his mind when seeing how violent the ecosystem is, until he is part of the group, which includes Nell, Zero, Andy and Thatcher, that discovers the intelligent life and helps get them off the island. The key characters throughout are Nell and Zero, being the only survivors of the initial attack and continuing to survive through several other attacks. Nell makes several discoveries about the ecosystem and creatures while Zero captures a lot of the events on film and also aids in some of Nell's discoveries.
Other than the island being the main 'bad guy' to a certain degree, the character that takes the mantle is Thatcher, from the beginning we discover he is obnoxious and only cares about being successful and rich. When he is taken to the island he too is against the nuking of the island, but more for his own interests and is completely against rescuing the intelligent creatures , attempting to leave them and the rest of the group to die on the island, Thatcher eventually gets his due and is killed by some creatures from the island.
The story line was OK however I found the sudden revelation of these intelligent creatures and them being saved a bit like an add on to give some good from the island, plus it was a small part of the book so felt a little rushed. I feel there could have been less running and screaming throughout and a bit more to the really interesting intelligent life that learned so much in a short period of time and could have been developed more. I mainly feel this way because I felt like this was the most interesting part of the book and it seemed to be going somewhere then they were escaping and soon after the book ended.
As I said, I enjoyed the book but it is not one that I would read again, if you are a fan of scientifically detailed explanations interspersed with lot's of running, screaming and violence on an unexplored island then this is for you, if not maybe give it a miss.
My rating for Fragment is 5/10
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