The scientists on the reality television show “SeaLife” are real scientists, for the most part.  Some were hired for their looks by the show’s producer, Cynthea Leeds.  Cynthea even hired a phony crew and relegated the Trident‘s real crew to the background.  It all has to look good for the viewers at home.  There are some serious scientists aboard, such as Nell Duckworth and Andy Beasley.  But Cynthea is more interested in hooking everybody up than science because science doesn’t help the ratings.

Ratings are helped by drama.  The Trident receives a distress signal while cruising the South Pacific.  The EPIRB, emergency position indicating beacon, is from a lost boat that has washed ashore the mysterious and foreboding Hender’s Island.  Hender’s Island, named after the eighteenth century captain who discovered it, lies in isolated waters and boasts dangerous cliffs that keep the world out.  It’s a no man’s land that still waits to be discovered.

Nell Duckworth knows about the island, has been fascinated about the unexplored place for years.  She jumps at this once in a lifetime chance to step foot on Hender’s Island.  And Cynthea jumps at the chance to film something that has never been filmed before; she even convinces the studio executives to go live for the island landing.  Nell and a select few of the fake crew and the other viewer-friendly scientists go ashore.  Other than Nell, and a cameraman named Zero, all the others are massacred by creatures they have never seen before.  Cynthea’s footage becomes an item of speculation in the entertainment and scientific world, and the United States Government quickly has the Navy on the spot and initiate a media blackout.

Hender’s Island isn’t the friendliest place on Earth.  It’s not the funniest.  Imagine Disney World if Mickey Mouse bit your head off, defecated down your throat and then Goofy ate Mickey and you.  The island is part of a lost supercontinent that has evolved on its own for 600 million years and everything, including the vegetation, feeds on everything else.  Projected life span on the island is just a matter of minutes.  It’s a rough damn place.  You don’t even want a summer home there.

Fragment is alive with invention.  It has some awesome creature conceptions.  The action is fast, the science is smart; I don’t know if the science is real, but it sounds pretty, and scarily, plausible.  I even learned a few fun facts about life here on our own planet.  And those creatures, they are some vicious bastards.  Warren Fahy isn’t as compulsively readable as Michael Crichton; Fragment has been compared to Jurassic Park, and it is more fun than that classic in places.  Crichton wrote with more authority though, his science was as fun, if not more fun and thrilling, as his action.  Fahy, I believe, though, has it in him to approach the master.

For the first two-thirds of the book, I thought Fragment was going to be, hands down, the best book I’ve read for the year.  Then the last act and it went into an almost tailspin.  All the bloodthirsty, breakneck, “oh my God are they going to survive” thrills and monster horror that came before, the last third or so of the book let me down.  The big “discovery” by the scientists was too saccharine.  I’m not against Spielberg moments, but it was too much for me in this book to point it almost ruined it.  But I didn’t write it, Mr. Fahy did, and I hope in his next book he can wed the two together with better results.  I know he can.  I believe in him.

4 out of 5
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