Island 731

Starred review from January 14, 2013
Robinson (Secondworld) puts his distinctive mark on Michael Crichton territory with this terrifying present-day riff on The Island of Dr. Moreau. Oceanographer Avril Joliet, a member of the research vessel Magellan, which has been exploring a huge polluted area in the Pacific known as the Garbage Patch, makes an intriguing find—a loggerhead turtle whose body and shell are pinched in the middle. An autopsy reveals that the turtle’s stomach is distended to more than twice its normal size. Joliet and her colleagues later end up shipwrecked on an island, where they encounter even stranger creatures, unnatural hybrids that are hostile to human life. Joliet and Mark Hawkins, a gifted tracker and former park ranger, work frantically to keep themselves and the rest of the crew alive while searching for answers. Action and scientific explanation are appropriately proportioned, making this one of the best Jurassic Park successors and on a par with Warren Fahy’s Fragment. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group.

March 1, 2013
A research vessel studying the effects of sea life around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch lands in a storm, and the ship and crew find themselves on a mysterious island. They have no memory of how they were stranded, and evidence of sabotage makes the stituation all the stranger. Mark Hawkins leads the survivors on a trek to find answers, but they start vanishing one by one. It soon becomes apparent that the ship and crew were brought to this island for a reason, and the truththere are crazed scientists on the island, and you know what horrific stuff they docould destroy their lives forever. Take a traditional haunted-house tale and throw in a little Island of Dr. Moreau and a touch of Clash of the Titans, and you wind up with this scary and grotesque novel. Robinson, a skilled blender of the thriller and horror genres, has another winner on his hands.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)