TEST
Stephen King has blurbs on a lot of books, so that isn’t always an indicator of quality, but this time he was right on the money when he said: “If you’ve never read Gerritsen, figure in the price of electricity when you buy your first novel by her… ’cause baby, you are going to be up all night.” I started this book at about 9 PM, and didn’t close it until I finished it, four hours later.
Emma Watson is a doctor, researcher and astronaut, soon to be divorced from her husband, Jack McCallum. Jack is also a doctor but was grounded from the astronaut program. Emma is preparing for a months-long assignment aboard the international space station orbiting Earth, when a tragedy back on Earth leads to the current space station doctor’s early replacement by Emma. This sets off a string of small incidents which together add up to a disaster of epic proportions.
What would happen if a horrifyingly brutal, contagious, and 100% fatal disease broke out on a space station? How would they get the astronauts home? Or would they try to get them home at all? And if your about-to-be-ex-wife was one of the stranded astronauts, what would you do?
Gerritsen answers all of these questions, and more, at a heart-stopping pace. I know I’m reading a good suspense novel when I catch myself mentally chanting “Come on, come on, come on…” as I turn the pages through the climactic scenes, and I was chanting a lot when I read Gravity.
Gerritsen is a doctor, so the descriptions of medical procedures are detailed and convincing. She includes things I’ve never considered, like the difficulty of performing CPR in weightless conditions. She also researched the heck out of NASA procedures, terminology, and the current space shuttle operations, and made very plausible near-future speculations about space station life. Nitpickers with special training will probably find lapses here and there, but I was thoroughly captivated and convinced by this story.
The romance angle in the book doesn’t get a lot of development. We don’t learn much about Jack and Emma as people – why they fell in love in the first place, what their relationship was like – but it didn’t seem to matter. If you take as a given that they are both people who are hurting but still in love, the decisions they make as the story climaxes are touching and even heartbreaking.
One word of warning: the disease has exceedingly, well, icky effects on its victims, and there are some really gruesome (although not violent, except on a microscopic level) scenes in this book. If ER is sometimes too much for you, you will probably want to avoid Gravity. But if you are a fan of Michael Crichton or Robin Cook, definitely give Gerritsen a try. And make sure you don’t have any early-morning plans for the next day.
Grade: A
Book Type: Science Fiction
Sensuality: N/A
Review Date: 14/03/00
Publication Date: 2000
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.