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A review by sciencekoala
The Cobra Event by Richard Preston
5.0
The Cobra Event is a whirlwind of intense fiction based in just enough reality to make it truly disconcerting. The events described and the virus featured in the book are fiction, but the science concepts behind biological weapons, genetic engineering, and epidemiology are based in fact. The fact that this book was published a couple decades ago is especially unsettling, given that the current international environment is not as peaceful as one would hope - and world powers’ capacity for producing weapons of all kinds has grown exponentially.
Preston does a fantastic job of explaining the science in such a way to make it accessible to readers with varying levels of scientific experience. The pacing is fast enough to keep building excitement, to such an extent that I found it impossible to put the book down. It was gripping in its plausibility and horror. Some of the events that take place during the final pages of the book seem a little improbable (perhaps even forced), but I suppose real secret ops could be this wild without us ever knowing. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in realistic science-fiction, epidemiology, biological warfare, and/or infectious disease.
Preston does a fantastic job of explaining the science in such a way to make it accessible to readers with varying levels of scientific experience. The pacing is fast enough to keep building excitement, to such an extent that I found it impossible to put the book down. It was gripping in its plausibility and horror. Some of the events that take place during the final pages of the book seem a little improbable (perhaps even forced), but I suppose real secret ops could be this wild without us ever knowing. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in realistic science-fiction, epidemiology, biological warfare, and/or infectious disease.