First in the DAIMONES trilogy by a physicist at
Cerne -
that description takes a lot of living up to. Thousands of
fishes and birds are dying suddenly all around the world.
Naturalists can't find a cause, while politicians
concentrate on terrorism or economic collapse. The deaths
however are not a problem, but a symptom. Trouble's
coming.
Dan works in a high-tech, high pressure job in
Switzerland.
When he loses his job it's almost a relief. He has a
normal
home life so now he can relax for a while and look around.
Charting patterns of animal colony collapse - which now
include hundreds of gorillas - Dan worries that the
creatures dying now are higher up the evolutionary tree. A
storm overnight shakes his mountainous home, but next day
the aftermath is shocking. The story becomes darker as Dan
discovers people dead on the roads, at the wheels of cars,
even in bed. The internet is up, but not updated. Twitter
is down. Phones go unanswered.
Dan is a convincingly real person, with the resources to
run a Facebook ad as a 'message in a bottle' to other
survivors and watch live-feed webcams for movement. He
stocks up on free goods, of course, to feed and protect
his
family. Since some animals have survived, he thinks about
dogs, wolves... and other, desperate, survivors.
As the months pass the land starts looking like an 'Earth
After Us' programme. What would you do? And if you
thought
you had found a survivor, would you be pleased, or
paranoid? How do you think he would be feeling?
Especially
if he thought alien beings were responsible for the
deaths?
The style of writing is extremely readable and grounded so
anyone from older teen age could pick up on the tale, but
there are some adult scenes and concepts. I'm pleased that
we don't get a horror story; while there are bodies, there
is no ghoulishness. Less easy on the eyes is a long
explanation at the end, whose astronomy was readable but
trails of losses over aeons less so. I would have liked an
explanation for the animal deaths. Massimo Marino has put
himself into the shoes of his main character and given us
a
nail-biting dystopian SF tale, DAIMONES, to consider with
care. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of
the Daimones trilogy.
Could Dan Amenta be the last man alive on the planet?
Death has swept away the lives of billions of people, but
Dan and his family were spared. By whom, and why?
Surviving, to give meaning to their lives, and looking for
other survivors lead Dan to discover the truth about the
extermination of the human race.
The encounter with Laura, a young and sexy girl of Italian
origin, raises ethical and moral questions that had never
touched the Amentas family before.
Other survivors force Dan to confront his past to find
answers to the many questions.
The past and the present come together and upset the
fragile balance, physical and mental, which allowed the
Amentas to find a new meaning to their existence.
Dan discovers his final role in a plan with million years
roots. Planet Earth is in the hands of an ancient power,
and the survivors have to choose a future that has no
past, or remain in a past with no future.
--------
"Even with the best of intentions, cruelty is just around
the corner."
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy