Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic read!, 6 May 2006
Everything we hear about today is GLOBAL WARMING. This book takes a look at what would happen if a person woke up one day and found out that all the predictions we most fear had actually come true. That's the experience a Los Angeles doctor, Nate Sheehan, goes through in this extraordinary book.
Dr. Sheehan is murdered in 2006 and his wife, who is part of the "cryonics" movement, freezes his head so that she can someday be re-united with him. But technology doesn't become available until 2069, when a group of scientists in Phoenix, Arizona bring him back to life and attach his head to a "donor body." The story, one that is amazingly well-researched, deals with all the problems the scientists face in reviving human flesh. It's also a kind of "reincarnation" story (without being metaphysical), as Nate's consciousness reignites.
The authorities don't know about his existence at first - he's flying "under the radar." Then begins a new adventure, that of learning how to use a stranger's body, and how peculiar it is to imagine that the body once belonged to someone else. And then the crushing reality that the world is coping with the arrival of global warming, and not the place that Nate remotely recognizes from his former life as a rich, privileged doctor in turn-of-the-century L.A. With this as a background, he must find out what happened to his beloved wife and family.
This is a fascinating, engrossing story. I loved all the science and recovery part. Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. It has that Da Vinci Code gallop of pace, which I like in thrillers. And there are some extraordinary things that happen to Nate that I won't say, or I'll reveal too much.
Buy it. Read it. Pass it on to others. This has bestseller written all over it.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Teriffic Thriller!, 5 Sep 2007
I love thrillers by Peter James and when I saw that he had personally recommended this book, I was eager to give it a try. Just like he said, I was impressed from the first page, at the speed and pace of this extraordinary thriller. I don't think I've read anything quite like it for some time. It involves a doctor who is shot and killed in the present day. His wife cryonically freezes his head and he's brought back to life towards the end of the century. But he needs a body to complete the operation, so they find one from a dubious source. It's a real tour de force, part medical thriller, part sci fi, part horror. And the docotr goes on an incredible journey, waking up when global warming has got a grip on the world and oil has finally run out. If there's ever a book that we should be reading that captures just what the future is going to look like, The Waking is it. I can't wait to see what T.M. Jenkins is going to do next.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superbly done., 7 Aug 2006
I'm not a fan of science fiction. I'm sceptical of novels set in the not-too-distant future, and more sceptical of novels set in the distant future. When I saw that The Waking, a medical thriller, was partly set in `Arizona, 2070', it nearly put me off altogether.
But I'm glad I persevered, because this book is riveting - especially for a sceptic. Not only intelligent, challenging and highly original, TM Jenkins' debut novel is also an utter page-turner.
We're on the brink of a real fuel crisis, with the threat of global warming beating down stronger every day, and The Waking combines our damaged world with Frankenstein's old innovation, cryonic preservation, to take us to a place that is terrifying in its plausibility.
This novel has `bestseller' scrawled all over it, because it is paced like The Da Vinci Code, with research that is just as good and controversy that is just as credible. For me, it goes one better: it is extremely well-written and disturbing down to the very last line.
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