A Review of Pandemic: A Novel by Scott Sigler

Pandemic: A Novel
by Scott Sigler

Damn, Scott, you are one sick, twisted writer. You get everything so right. The dialog just jumps right off the page. Everything just sounds so right. It sounds like real people are talking right into my brain. And all of the action in your book, it’s just insane. Who can have all that stuff in his head? You must be totally bat-shit crazy, with a capital C and Z! Living with you must be a real, unbelievable trip.

Scott Sigler blew me away with Pandemic. This is a great final book in the Infected Trilogy. His characters are so alive, and his ideas so far out, but believable. This book is very hard to put down. If you haven’t read the first two books, that’s too bad, but don’t let that stop you from jumping right in with Pandemic. After you finish, you will want to go right out and grab Infected, because that is where all this madness began. If you have been waiting for Pandemic for, what seems like forever, you won’t be disappointed. I hope that you can take a day off work, because you won’t want to go to bed until you finish.

I give Pandemic 5 Stars out of 5 and TWO Big Thumbs Up! This is a great book, if you can read, you need to read it, if you can’t read, get the audiobook!

I have to let you know that I have been a fan of Scott Sigler’s writing since I first came across him back in his first days of podcasting. I heard about the podcast on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, a podcast that I listened to back in late 2004, into 2005. Adam would talk about new podcast ideas that he had heard about. I subscribed to Earthcore, the worlds first podcast-only novel, right away. I was blown away by the first episode and couldn’t wait to get the next. Scott continued to produce his podcasts and therefore give his books away for free, but once he got a book contract, I would purchase each one as it came out. I’m what is known as an “Original Junkie”, but irregardless of my OJ status, this book is GREAT! It is the best of the Infected Trilogy, and Infected is a 5 Star Book, so that says a lot.

Scott Sigler has a unique style. He writes very realistic dialog and paints a bunch of over the top characters to speak those lines. One of the most unusual parts of his style is that you never know if the character that you are connecting with and is in a tight spot will make it out. Scott will allow some of the main characters to die. This raises the tension. There isn’t ever the feeling that you know it will all work out in the end. You hope that it will, but no guarantees. Once you start reading his novels, you will agree, then you can be a “Junkie” too.
I received this Digital Review Copy for free from edelweiss.com and NetGalley.com. But I still purchased the hardcover, because I just have to have it!

Book Description
Release date: January 21, 2014
Scott Sigler’s Infected shocked readers with a visceral, up-close account of physical metamorphosis and one man’s desperate fight for sanity and survival, as “Scary” Perry Dawsey suffered the impact of an alien pathogen’s early attempts at mass extinction. In the sequel Contagious, Sigler pulled back the camera and let the reader experience the frantic national response to this growing cataclysm.

And now in Pandemic, the entire human race balances on the razor’s edge of annihilation, beset by an enemy that turns our own bodies against us, that changes normal people into psychopaths or transforms them into nightmares.

To some, Doctor Margaret Montoya is a hero—a brilliant scientist who saved the human race from an alien intelligence determined to exterminate all of humanity. To others, she’s a monster—a mass murderer single-handedly responsible for the worst atrocity ever to take place on American soil.

All Margaret knows is that she’s broken. The blood of a million deaths is on her hands. Guilt and nightmares have turned her into a shut-in, too mired in self-hatred even to salvage her marriage, let alone be the warrior she once was.

But she is about to be called into action again. Because before the murderous intelligence was destroyed, it launched one last payload — a soda can–sized container filled with deadly microorganisms that make humans feed upon their own kind.

That harmless-looking container has languished a thousand feet below the surface of Lake Michigan, undisturbed and impotent . . . until now.
Part Cthulhu epic, part zombie apocalypse and part blockbuster alien-invasion tale, Pandemic completes the Infected trilogy and sets a new high-water mark in the world of horror fiction.

Product Details
Series: Infected Trilogy
Hardcover: 592 pages
Publisher: Crown (January 21, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307408973
ISBN-13: 978-0307408976
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 2.2
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds

About the Author

New York Times best-selling novelist Scott Sigler is the author of NOCTURNAL, ANCESTOR, INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS, hardcover thrillers from Crown Publishing; and the co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his Galactic Football League series (THE ROOKIE, THE STARTER, THE ALL-PRO and THE MVP).

Before he was published, Scott built a large online following by giving away his self-recorded audiobooks as free, serialized podcasts. His loyal fans, who named themselves “Junkies,” have downloaded over eight million individual episodes of his stories and interact daily with Scott and each other in the social media space.

Scott reinvented book publishing when he released EARTHCORE as the world’s first “podcast-only” novel. Released in twenty weekly episodes, EARTHCORE harkened back to the days of serialized radio fiction. His innovative use of technology puts him at the forefront of modern-day publishing and has garnered brand-name exposure among hundreds of thousands of fiction fans and technology buffs.

He’s been covered in Time Magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher’s Weekly, The Huffington Post, Business Week and Fangoria. He still records his own audiobooks and gives away every story – for free – to his Junkies at http://www.ScottSigler.com.

A Michigan native, Scott lives in San Francisco but still roots for his beloved Detroit Lions.

The book description is from Amazon.   Pandemic: A Novel