Rocketgirl's Full Review: Tess Gerritsen - Gravity
A stack of books that I just got at a used book sale were calling me, so I picked up the book on the top--Gravity by Tess Gerritsen. I had never heard of her, but I like medical thrillers, so I figured I would enjoy this book. Boy did I ever! I couldn't put it down!
Emma Watson is a doctor and astronaut. She and her crew climb aboard the space shuttle on a mission to the international space station. They will relieve one of the astronauts as well as return home with some completed experiments. Emma stays on board to relieve the astronaut. Wait a minute, you say, this sounds like science fiction! Yes, that's the Michael Crichton part of this story!
Just a few days into the mission, one of the crew members becomes sick. Emma works frantically save him, but is helpless against an unknown organism. An emergency shuttle is sent up to retrieve the body and study it on earth. But before the shuttle can disengage from the station, the organism escapes the decomposing body and infects the entire shuttle crew. The rest of the story tries to contain the bug and get the astronauts home safely.
If you like science or medicine, this book is for you. It is technical enough to interest technical people but also not so full of jargon the layman can't understand it. There is a little romance in it (not much), but most of the romance is the "happily ever after" ending (well sorta). For you conspiracy theorists, this book should definitely be of interest, since there is definitely hush-hush secret government cover-up going on.
The book has very fast pacing. You know within the first 50 pages that something is going to go wrong. The reader knows more than the characters, so the reader knows the precise moment when things will go awry. At times like this, I think to myself, "Uh, oh." As the characters struggle to figure out what is wrong, you want to yell at them, "Can't you see that it's....!" I love the way the author draws the reader into the story in this way.
I also liked that the book wasn't extremely technical, but was technical enough to sound realistic. If accurate, it was also enjoyable to understand more about the shuttle missions and the space stations. The astronaut characters were all likeable, and the enemy government agents were perfect for the flip side of that coin. A very enjoyable book. I have "Life Support" by Ms. Gerritsen in that same stack of books I mentioned. It will be coming soon.
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