Fragment

It's surprising how easy it is to get drawn into the primeval world depicted in FRAGMENT. Narrator Robin Downes guides listeners to a desert island in the most desolate part of the Pacific. It's a place where a whole new form of evolution has developed, and where only the strongest survive. Downes's tone alternates between scientific detachment and child-like awe as he paints a picture of a lost world that should not exist. Truly imaginative and bizarre animals stalk the island, and all are built to survive by killing. From the tiny "disc ants" to the enormous "spigers" (spider-tigers), everything is engineered to kill. Or is it? Scientists battle the island and their own government to find a way to preserve what they've found. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 23, 2009
Fahy’s imaginative debut puts a fresh spin on the survival-of-prehistoric-beasts theme popularized by Jurassic Park
. When members of the cable reality show SeaLife
, aboard a ship in the South Pacific, respond to a distress beacon from Henders Island, several of the show’s scientists wind up slaughtered by bizarre animals on the remote island. In response, the U.S. government blockades Henders Island to contain the serious biothreat its unique fauna could pose to humanity. The ship’s botanist, Nell Duckworth, joins the investigative team, which quickly finds that arthropods on the island have evolved into sophisticated and ferocious life forms. Particularly memorable and frightening are the creatures Nell dubs “spigers,” which have eight legs and are “twice the size of a Bengal tiger.” Exciting debates on topics like the role of sexual reproduction in the development of life on Earth provide a sound scientific background.