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Beneath (2000)

by Jeremy Robinson(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Horror

series

Origins

review 1: I really wanted to like this book, I did but after chapter two it lost me and although I did read the whole book, more out of a determination to let nothing beat me, it was a push. Based in the year 2021, about seven years in the future, we have this meteorite with some alien life form crashing into the Arctic. Enter hero number one, Peterson who's leading a team of geologists searching for meteorites. Leaving aside the fancifully named-Geospeck, an analyser and their fanciful biohazard suits, you're studying rocks that have come through outer space, been subjected to intense heat on entering our atmosphere and any alien virus has been burned to a crisp. This one has come from Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter.But this virus survives and one scientist falls and face plants... more the rock, resulting in instant contamination of his mind and body and death within seconds. Now I'm no virus expert but right there it's looking shaky. Move to Antarctica to pick up Connelly, the sexy female scientist who is just about to drill into an underground lake. She gets a call from her employer to report back with her team for a secret mission.Now here's what I don't get. This alien virus, which is truly devastating is supposedly found on Europa so what does this GEC do? It sends half a dozen scientists on a spaceship worth billions all the way to Europa in a breathtaking three months to find the source of this virus because it's an alien life form. Now they've got it all, a fancy drive system, a you beaut gravity system, and, chairs that envelope them in metal to keep them in stasis. Why for God's sake? They can walk around this humungous space ship with ease, it has all the mod cons, it even has a massive greenhouse. One of the major issues for long distance space travel is muscle deterioration and the effects of radiation. The clever chaps who designed this space ship have solved all of these problems so why put them into stasis? Did I miss something here?At this point I nearly gave up but I soldiered on thinking it might get better but I was so wrong. It got worse, as they say in Predator, much much worse but in the movie it sounded better because she has a Spanish accent. They get onto Europa and find the source of this virus, the red killer cucumber and here's where it all goes south. Only Peterson and his CDC specialist Cholie know that this red cucumber is not for eating! The others are all happily drilling through the ice to the ocean underneath while these two are harvesting red cucumbers, which seem to be alive. When they all get back onto the ship Peterson decides, against orders, to sneak the red cucumber into the greenhouse and puts it into a high tech incubator that grows things in seconds. Why don't they sell this incubator in DIY shops? It would save us all a power of grief. Well of course that was a bad idea because he gets stung by this cucumber, which has an actual brain and can even read minds too. It possesses him and he goes postal. It gets even worse when Conelly and her two crewmates go back to Europa leaving Peterson in isolation and go under the ice in a submersible where they find AMAZING Europian whales, one of the crew members gets eaten by a gigantic monster and manages to get himself shot out the other end. COOL! He rescues the other two who've gotten stuck in a cave, they then decide to go exploring this cave, get eaten by a wall and as it turns out the moon is actually a gigantic living organism that talks to Connelly's mind. It isn't just the science that's flawed, the scientists are seriously dysfunctional. I wouldn't let them alone in a paddling pool. The love triangle between Conelly and two guys was predictable and lame.The fundamental problem with this book is the fact the writer has crammed in too many fanciful gadgets, stunning plot twists, climax after climax after climax. Scientists who defy their most basic instincts to actually PUT themselves in danger just for the sake of science, that we don't care about them any more. I know it's science fiction and there is an understanding that we suspend our powers of disbelief, but this would have been better as a space comedy because that's essentially what it is.I've given it two stars because it did take some effort to write but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Now I have to go raid the refrigerator and toss out all those mysterious red cucumbers.
review 2: This is the first Jeremy Robinson I've read. I was pleasantly surprised. During the first chapter I made the assumption that it was a basic foreign object 'pandemic' going around the globe so when in the 2nd chapter they discussed travelling to a moon of Jupiter, I was excited. It was fast paced, had good character development and what they find is creepy, unnerving and has a sense of realism - you could see it happening. I'm definately going to read another of his books. less

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