Had very high hopes for this one after hearing glowing recommendations on A Good Read, and seeing the Philip Pullman review on the front "The best thriller I've ever read".
Well it was quite a good set up, and there were exciting plot elements in there, but overall I was disappointed. Notes I made when reading it:
At one point he mentions the "Jewish whorl" - which is supposedly a dominant genetic characteristic of thumb prints for Jewish people. I couldn't see any mention of this when I googled it though.
On p34 they're trying to work out where the message came from that was sent to the professor. Don't know who's good guys and bad guys yet but at this stage I am pretty hooked to know what'll happen.
p48 good guys are Americans and they've worked out there is a secret lab in Siberia. Think Tony would like this as lots of apparently logical deduction has led them to this (correct) conclusion.
Good cliffhanger ending to chapters. E.g. this is the result of analysing satellite video which they first believe is a roll call of people moving out of a burning building following an explosion: The men who stood in their underpants in the Siberian ice had arms that were too long. There was something not right about their femurs too, and the whole shape of their legs. The man reading the list and calling out the names was built the same way. And however the anthropometrist juggled the results, the way did not turn out to be human. April was the month of this observation
Found the pseudo scientific stuff about rogue harmonics and curing blindness a bit hard to follow. Also there seem to be two scientific discoveries going on here: curing blindness and breeding hybrid ape/Neanderthal creatures not sure which is the more important I think maybe one arose as a result of doing the other but I feel a bit muddled about this.
The book has maps in it but they're not terribly useful. Place names on there that I don't recognise and no place names for places I am looking for. Specific case is there's a map in the book next to a section where he's consulting an atlas and reading out place names to himself. None of these is on the map on the opposite page.
Bit disappointing after the initial build up. Last bit exciting but muddled in the middle and hard to follow.
Completed : 22-Apr-2018