Leviathans of Jupiter

December 20, 2010
Multiple Hugo–winner Bova's 18th Grand Tour novel (after 2009's The Return) is a quick-paced space adventure. Physicist Grant Archer, part of the exploratory team in 2002's Jupiter, is now a research station director dedicated to proving the intelligence of the leviathans his team encountered 20 years earlier. He's aided by four newcomers to the station: biologist and art student Deidre Ambrose; deep brain stimulation expert Andy Corvus; cyborg Dorn (familiar to readers of Bova's Asteroid Wars novels); and engineering physicist Maxwell Yeager. Katherine Westfall, a powerful International Astronomical Authority member, is also en route to Jupiter, on a mission to shut down Archer's team. Bova is at his best writing about the leviathans and their perceptions. The human motivations and emotions (particularly romance) seem more shoe-horned in, with the exception of Archer's engaging scientific passion.

December 15, 2010

Book 13 in Bova's Grand Tour series, and a direct sequel to Jupiter (2001), wherein physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter's planetary ocean in an attempt to study the enormous creatures that inhabit it.

Now director of the research station orbiting Jupiter, Archer has a staff of scientists ready and eager to send a vessel of highly advanced design into Jupiter's ocean hoping to communicate with the Leviathans, whom they suspect are intelligent. Before the expedition gets underway, however, super-rich paranoid megalomaniac Katherine Westfall arrives, determined to shut down the research for her own mad reasons. Finally, the vessel launches with four crew members aboard: curvaceous grad student Deirdre Ambrose; lanky, color-blind dolphin-communications specialist Andy Corvus; Dorn, previously a murdering cyborg, now a philosopher; and lecherous ship's designer Max Yeager. So enormous are the pressures in Jupiter's deep waters that they must breathe oxygenated fluid despite the vessel's crush-resistant design. On the station, Westfall goes through her humdrum evil machinations. Under water, the humans debate whether the Leviathans are intelligent, just as the Leviathans wonder the same about them. Had Bova devoted some serious thought and effort to developing his lumpish aliens, it would have been possible to overlook this horrendous casting-by-numbers and blatantly obvious plotting. But the upshot, with the exception of a few dozen pages of real excitement, is tedium alternating with embarrassment.

A book that has "contractual obligation" stamped all over it.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

To prove that the massive symbionts, named Leviathans, that inhabit Jupiter's atmosphere possess intelligence, physicist Grant Archer readies a deep-pressure manned probe for immersion in the giant planet's deadly cloud cover. Equally anxious to thwart his attempt, millionaire Katherine Westfall seeks to outmaneuver Archer in her bid for the top spot in the International Astronautical Authority (IAA) by any means possible--including murder. Bova's novels revolving around the planets (Mars; Mercury; Venus; Jupiter) contain common themes--rebellion against political and religious interference in space colonization, human courage, and the desire to reach the stars; his latest addition provides all that as well as fully realized characters and a fast-action plot. VERDICT Bova's fans and hard sf lovers should flock to his latest novel.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2011
In the well-received Jupiter (2001), Bova introduced scientist Grant Archer and the city-size life forms he discovers in the vast oceans of Jupiter. Now Archer returns, seeking to discover if the leviathans are intelligent. With him is a young woman who wants the expedition to jump-start her scientific career; against him is a woman who blames him for the death of her sister. But as the expedition plunges deeper into Jupiters atmosphere, the planet itself becomes the real protagonist, with its bizarre environment of bone-straining gravity, storms the size of planets, and internal heat from the days when it was trying to be a star. And then there are the leviathans themselves, apparently thriving in that same environmentbut how? Finding the answer will keep readers turning pages, particularly if they are aficionados of hard-science sfof which this is a stellar example and Bova one of the major creators.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)