Behemoth: B-Max

July 1, 2004
Five years after Lenie Clark emerged from the sea armed with the aehemoth microbe, a biosphere-devouring organism that is inexorably destroying the world, a group of corporate executives and the altered creatures known as rifters take refuge in a colony called Atlantis on the ocean floor. When something unexpected finds them and begins killing the rifters, only Clark has the means to prevent it, if she can. In the first part of the two-volume conclusion to his "Rifters" trilogy, Watts tells his story with hard-hitting prose and fast-paced action scenes that should appeal to fans of hard sf and sf thrillers.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2004
Several years have passed since Lenie Clark unleashed the fury of Behemoth on the world. Rifters and corpses (i.e., corporate executives) live in the depths of the Atlantic, sustaining a fragile trust that is broken when an apparently new strain of Behemoth that can survive in saltwater deeps (theoretically, an impossibility) kills a rifter unfortunate enough to fall victim to a particularly foul-tempered deep-sea "fish." Unfortunately, those who hold grudges, especially rifter Grace Nolan, see conspiracy everywhere and in the name of self-defense go after the corpses. Lenie, though rapidly losing what little authority she had, does her best to prevent escalation into total disaster. The evidence, however, indicates a certain validity in Grace's claims; Behemoth was, at some point, altered. This is a cliff-hanger of the worst sort, leaving almost every end loose because, Watts explains, another volume will conclude the story begun in " Starfish" (1999) and continued in " Maelstrom "(2001). Oh well; it's fast-paced and dramatic, promising revelations in a satisfactory--one hopes-- conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)