LitPick Review
This book isn't part of a genre, but a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and has several threads of plot happening at once. One thread involves Chris, a school kid whose mission in life is to be cool and be accepted by other "cool" kids. Instead, while on a field trip to the British Museum, he ends up meeting a woman who claims she's been waiting for him her whole life, gives him a glowing bracelet that won't come off his wrist, and says he will channel the power of the "Defender." Chris can't make head or tail of this, and all he cares about is that the bracelet just won't come off. Meanwhile, under London, a secret experiment in the form of a genetically altered T- rex isn't good enough for the new British Prime Minister, who withdraws funding and orders it to be killed. But the abnormally large T-rex, Tim, has a strong survival instinct, if not brains, and so escapes straight through London and into the ocean. There he learns he is no fluke of science; he is the new Defender of the Earth. Defender from what? As it turns out, the funding taken from the Tim project was given to Professor Mallahide, a slightly crazed scientist so intent on world harmony that he has created a swarm of nanobots, or almost-beyond-microscopic robots, that can do just about anything, including taking apart a living creature and storing all its information by creating more nanobots. This might not be threatening if Mallahide was entirely convinced that this was the next step in human evolution, and when he allows his swarm to "translate" him, he eventually realizes that it is up to him to "translate" every other person in the world, even if they have no wish whatsoever to be turned into a swarm of tiny robots. Will Tim the Defender of the Earth find a way to destroy the Mallahide swarm and so keep the earth full of healthy change and randomness? Will Chris realize that there is more to life than standing on the sidelines and waiting for events to unfold? We sure hope so as the UK disintegrates by the hour and the Mallahide swarm grows and grows . . .
Opinion:
The plot got rather strange, with the Kraken, The Defender of the Earth, and the Chosen One mixed with nanobots, but I was okay with it, I could swallow it -- I'm used to reading fantasy. But the main characters, Tim and Chris -- especially Chris -- got so infuriating at times. I usually take offense when dinosaurs are made out as stupid, fight-seeking behemoths, and this time was no exception. Tim never got any smarter than he was at the beginning of the book. But Chris irked me the most. I was wondering whether Sam Enthoven really thought a kid could be so incredibly selfish and uncaring about the world, even if that kid was doing it on the basis of wanting to be "cool." (Maybe British kids are different. I wouldn't know.) But then the end came, and Anna, Chris's "friend," gives him a (mere) verbal scolding (I was waiting for her to slap him upside the head), and it turns out all he ends up really caring about is HER, so he saves the world. Typical. The boy will do anything for the girl. That's just great. How many more of those do we possibly need? However, there were other aspects I did like. Having just read a book on philosophy, I was intrigued by the notion that change was best for Earth, that the process of evolution (random mutations) has a power to it. It's a little hard to explain without just reading the book, and, true, some other people might be offended, confused, or just indifferent. There are strange concepts to grasp in the book, and I enjoyed the challenge. If it wasn't for the reasons I stated in the first paragraph, I would have rated it higher. An open mind is required to read this book, and a dictionary. There are a few large words that, when I looked them up, didn't really need to be there. There's something for the sci-fi fans, but they would also have to be okay with fantasy. It's an odd mix, but it works out, in the end. The characters need some serious development before I give it a 5 rating, though.
