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hellsfire's review
3.0
I love Kevin J. Anderson. I've read a lot of his non-licensed books and have enjoyed him. That said, this is probably his first book that I didn't enjoy as much. I don't know if that's because this was co-authored or what.
There are two reasons I bought Ill Wind: one, because it's Kevin J. Anderson and two, because it takes place primarily in the Bay Area. Now, they capture the Bay Area pretty well. A lot better than most I've seen. They get the bridges right, traffic, and types of people. Although was one thing about flying into SFO instead of OAKAIR if going to Livermore. So the setting was great overall, especially for a Bay Area native.
I also really liked the idea of what was happening. I've read post-apocalyptic books before and most have to do with a great catastrophe that literally changes the world in a usually negative way. Losing fuel and plastics only affects us humans not the planet itself.
Ill Wind reads as two books. I think I enjoyed the first half more because it dealt with the characters and I was interested in them. The impact of the slow build of the plot was also interesting. It was also more local. I didn't care much for the second half.
While having faster pacing, the second half of the book was too localized for me. I wanted to see the impact of what happened in other parts of the world. A few things are mentioned but never shown. Things aren't even shown much in the United States. The entire book takes places in the Southwest and in California.
I also don't like the ending. Things aren't resolved. I want to know what happens to characters or situations. Did they move on? Did the US collapse and people set up their own city-states? Did they find an alternate energy source? I would have settled on an Epilogue. The only thing resolved was the love story.
Ill Wind was an all right book. It wasn't as good as the other Anderson books I've read and I don't know anything about Doug Beason so I can't talk about him.
There are two reasons I bought Ill Wind: one, because it's Kevin J. Anderson and two, because it takes place primarily in the Bay Area. Now, they capture the Bay Area pretty well. A lot better than most I've seen. They get the bridges right, traffic, and types of people. Although was one thing about flying into SFO instead of OAKAIR if going to Livermore. So the setting was great overall, especially for a Bay Area native.
I also really liked the idea of what was happening. I've read post-apocalyptic books before and most have to do with a great catastrophe that literally changes the world in a usually negative way. Losing fuel and plastics only affects us humans not the planet itself.
Ill Wind reads as two books. I think I enjoyed the first half more because it dealt with the characters and I was interested in them. The impact of the slow build of the plot was also interesting. It was also more local. I didn't care much for the second half.
While having faster pacing, the second half of the book was too localized for me. I wanted to see the impact of what happened in other parts of the world. A few things are mentioned but never shown. Things aren't even shown much in the United States. The entire book takes places in the Southwest and in California.
I also don't like the ending. Things aren't resolved. I want to know what happens to characters or situations. Did they move on? Did the US collapse and people set up their own city-states? Did they find an alternate energy source? I would have settled on an Epilogue. The only thing resolved was the love story.
Ill Wind was an all right book. It wasn't as good as the other Anderson books I've read and I don't know anything about Doug Beason so I can't talk about him.
sweetpeppah's review
3.0
a lot of interesting ideas of how things could go wrong and possibly be fixed.. but it jumps around to a lot of different characters to do that, and no one got enough development to be a real-seeming person. of course all these random folks converge and reconverge onto one climactic event, which is a lot of coincidences to swallow but makes for a good fun story. it seems to have a decent scientific underpinning, there are lots of details that seem plausible, but then the list of plastics that's suppposed to be the official memo of things the microbe eats seemed to be very lay-person and not comprehensive or useful(not sure why it was included, twice), and there were several times where i found myself questioning the consistency of available materials that seemed too convenient.
buildhergender's review against another edition
4.0
Ill Wind
The short of the story is everything is made of oil.
Starting on an oil carrier that is heading into the San Francisco harbor, wait that can't be real can it? Holy Shit they really do are we a fucked up species or what? Anyway on board the boat is a man, Conner, who has gotten in trouble for stealing from his ship mates. His plan is to get everyone out of the bridge so that he can steal his employment papers, including his identity, and any evidence of his wrong doings. He pulls the fire alarm and while everyone is investigating he locks the bridges door, grabs his papers and crawls out of the window. Unfortunately he decided to do this just at the tanker is heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Hyjinks happen the boat crashes into the bridge spilling oil everywhere.
Unsurprisingly, people are upset about this turn of events. It gets worse when operations to remove oil from the boat before it sinks fail, leaving a lot of oil at the bottom of the bay that will leak for years. The company who owns the tanker, Oilstar, is looking at being responsible for the worst man made pollution disaster in all of history. This doesn't make the execs happy. So when they are given an option by one of their departments they jump on it without hesitation.
One of their departments, bio remediation, has a germ that will eat a certain component of oil. It is bred to only eat this and is not able to move through the air or survive very long without food. The agency sprays the germ and everything is OK....Oh wait that would be a pretty boring book.
Instead, what they do not know is that the lead researcher of the department is experiencing serious depression after losing every member of his family to accidents or war. On top of that he is suffering from terminal cancer. He has decided that this kind of disaster will never happen again. The reports and samples he provided for testing did do what it claimed to do, but that is not what he puts into the sprayer. Instead he puts in a stronger strain that eats anything petroleum based and is airborne.
In the White Sand desert a group of scientists have successfully tested a solar power beaming system. Using small satellites in space they beam energy to a field of antennas. The satellite only beams for five to 10 minutes but the idea is to put up a lot of them and as each one passes over they beam the power. Their small scale test of just 7 satellites works as predicted providing uninterrupted power the whole time. Even better, near by is a governmental experiment to build a large rail gun. With modifications this project could be used to launch the 20 satellites waiting for deployment. However, they are hampered by a governmental bureaucrat named Nedermyer is opposing this plan because of reasons, yes that is the best I can come up with for his motivation.
The germ is sprayed and soon it has cleaned up the oil, then it moves onto cars eating the gas right out of them and then onto other oil based products such as plastic and condoms. Quite rapidly the world is regressed back to the steam age.
The team in White Sands realizes that most of their system is non plastic based and what is made of plastic can be replaced. Within months they have electricity running and batteries to save it. They then start working on moving the electricity to the surrounding area.
In Washington D.C. The Speaker of the House finds himself the President of the United States, a job he never wanted, he planned on retiring and being a lobbyist. Still he tries and most of his trying is making more and more draconian laws and not understanding when they are not carried out. Isolated from most of the world he grows increasingly paranoid but determined to hold the US together. One of his orders is for all military bases to take control of civilian populations around their bases and put them under martial law. In Albuquerque a General Bayclock takes over the city and enforces martial law with great strictness. Soon, despite declaring he is reluctant to be in control, he is hanging dissenters and people who are stealing to survive. He hears about White Sands and decides it would be nice to have power. He sets off with some of this troops to take over the program and bring it back to Albuquerque. Along the way he uses his forces as a tool to project power with activities such as raiding from smaller communities food that he does not need but takes anyway to show who is the boss.
Todd Severyn was an oil company contractor who was tricked into spreading the wrong germ. He has been spending the time since the disaster trying to make up from it. When he hears that White Sands has electricity and with the satellites that are in JPL can produce more, he decides this is his chance at redemption. He has a cross country set of adventures that includes crashing a steam powered train, cannibals, and a crazed killer. Eventually he gets 10 of the satellites to White Sands only to have them captured by Bayclock before he can make the last mile to deliver them.
The scientists believe their facility is possibly the last chance to keep humanity from slipping back and decide to stand up to the General, with science. So they Macguyver some bombs, a catapult and a freaking rail gun powered shot gun that takes out 30 people with a shot, too bad it only works once.
Eventually the conflict comes down to a fist fight between the General and a pilot who has joined the scientists. After the General is killed his army quickly gives up and a majority of them join with the scientists.
In DC the president watches as one by one he loses contact with his military bases or receives reports that they have deserted and joined with the civilian population rather than rule. There are a few nuclear subs left that have stayed deep enough in the water to be safe from the oil plague. He orders his military staff to have them start to nuke American cities. In response everyone leaves the office and the president is now just a man in an empty office with no power.
Likes: This story was pretty engrossing. I stayed up till 1:30 am on a work night to finish it. A good number of characters but not so many that I was lost. And I feel that you can definitely tell the Beason influence/meld with Anderson as it does not quite read like his Saga of the Seven Sun books, and this is a good thing.
Bad: The lack of effects portrayed. We are told a couple of times that there will be mass starvation but it never seems to happen, or if it does it's swept under the rug and never covered. Nedermyer's motivation, in the beginning of the book. It's never explained why he is not supportive of the White Sands project. Then after when they are one of the few places producing working electricity he still seems opposed to the project eventually deserting them for the General's camp. It almost felt like he was added to give tension but never really flushed out enough to explain why he was causing the tension.
The short of the story is everything is made of oil.
Starting on an oil carrier that is heading into the San Francisco harbor, wait that can't be real can it? Holy Shit they really do are we a fucked up species or what? Anyway on board the boat is a man, Conner, who has gotten in trouble for stealing from his ship mates. His plan is to get everyone out of the bridge so that he can steal his employment papers, including his identity, and any evidence of his wrong doings. He pulls the fire alarm and while everyone is investigating he locks the bridges door, grabs his papers and crawls out of the window. Unfortunately he decided to do this just at the tanker is heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Hyjinks happen the boat crashes into the bridge spilling oil everywhere.
Unsurprisingly, people are upset about this turn of events. It gets worse when operations to remove oil from the boat before it sinks fail, leaving a lot of oil at the bottom of the bay that will leak for years. The company who owns the tanker, Oilstar, is looking at being responsible for the worst man made pollution disaster in all of history. This doesn't make the execs happy. So when they are given an option by one of their departments they jump on it without hesitation.
One of their departments, bio remediation, has a germ that will eat a certain component of oil. It is bred to only eat this and is not able to move through the air or survive very long without food. The agency sprays the germ and everything is OK....Oh wait that would be a pretty boring book.
Instead, what they do not know is that the lead researcher of the department is experiencing serious depression after losing every member of his family to accidents or war. On top of that he is suffering from terminal cancer. He has decided that this kind of disaster will never happen again. The reports and samples he provided for testing did do what it claimed to do, but that is not what he puts into the sprayer. Instead he puts in a stronger strain that eats anything petroleum based and is airborne.
In the White Sand desert a group of scientists have successfully tested a solar power beaming system. Using small satellites in space they beam energy to a field of antennas. The satellite only beams for five to 10 minutes but the idea is to put up a lot of them and as each one passes over they beam the power. Their small scale test of just 7 satellites works as predicted providing uninterrupted power the whole time. Even better, near by is a governmental experiment to build a large rail gun. With modifications this project could be used to launch the 20 satellites waiting for deployment. However, they are hampered by a governmental bureaucrat named Nedermyer is opposing this plan because of reasons, yes that is the best I can come up with for his motivation.
The germ is sprayed and soon it has cleaned up the oil, then it moves onto cars eating the gas right out of them and then onto other oil based products such as plastic and condoms. Quite rapidly the world is regressed back to the steam age.
The team in White Sands realizes that most of their system is non plastic based and what is made of plastic can be replaced. Within months they have electricity running and batteries to save it. They then start working on moving the electricity to the surrounding area.
In Washington D.C. The Speaker of the House finds himself the President of the United States, a job he never wanted, he planned on retiring and being a lobbyist. Still he tries and most of his trying is making more and more draconian laws and not understanding when they are not carried out. Isolated from most of the world he grows increasingly paranoid but determined to hold the US together. One of his orders is for all military bases to take control of civilian populations around their bases and put them under martial law. In Albuquerque a General Bayclock takes over the city and enforces martial law with great strictness. Soon, despite declaring he is reluctant to be in control, he is hanging dissenters and people who are stealing to survive. He hears about White Sands and decides it would be nice to have power. He sets off with some of this troops to take over the program and bring it back to Albuquerque. Along the way he uses his forces as a tool to project power with activities such as raiding from smaller communities food that he does not need but takes anyway to show who is the boss.
Todd Severyn was an oil company contractor who was tricked into spreading the wrong germ. He has been spending the time since the disaster trying to make up from it. When he hears that White Sands has electricity and with the satellites that are in JPL can produce more, he decides this is his chance at redemption. He has a cross country set of adventures that includes crashing a steam powered train, cannibals, and a crazed killer. Eventually he gets 10 of the satellites to White Sands only to have them captured by Bayclock before he can make the last mile to deliver them.
The scientists believe their facility is possibly the last chance to keep humanity from slipping back and decide to stand up to the General, with science. So they Macguyver some bombs, a catapult and a freaking rail gun powered shot gun that takes out 30 people with a shot, too bad it only works once.
Eventually the conflict comes down to a fist fight between the General and a pilot who has joined the scientists. After the General is killed his army quickly gives up and a majority of them join with the scientists.
In DC the president watches as one by one he loses contact with his military bases or receives reports that they have deserted and joined with the civilian population rather than rule. There are a few nuclear subs left that have stayed deep enough in the water to be safe from the oil plague. He orders his military staff to have them start to nuke American cities. In response everyone leaves the office and the president is now just a man in an empty office with no power.
Likes: This story was pretty engrossing. I stayed up till 1:30 am on a work night to finish it. A good number of characters but not so many that I was lost. And I feel that you can definitely tell the Beason influence/meld with Anderson as it does not quite read like his Saga of the Seven Sun books, and this is a good thing.
Bad: The lack of effects portrayed. We are told a couple of times that there will be mass starvation but it never seems to happen, or if it does it's swept under the rug and never covered. Nedermyer's motivation, in the beginning of the book. It's never explained why he is not supportive of the White Sands project. Then after when they are one of the few places producing working electricity he still seems opposed to the project eventually deserting them for the General's camp. It almost felt like he was added to give tension but never really flushed out enough to explain why he was causing the tension.
autumnesf's review
4.0
A oil spill begins the end of life as we know it when the cure eats all the gas and many plastics. Survival story of the aftermath.
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