Impact
By Douglas Preston
Published January 5, 2009 (Hardcover) A Forge Hardcover
When I was a kid, we heard stories that we could pass straight through the Earth, all the way to China. In Douglas Preston’s captivating thriller Impact, there’s a similar suggestion — but with a megaton story behind it. I wonder if that old China story was the spark for Preston’s novel, and I’ll have the chance to ask him in the morning when I interview him.
Preston interweaves former-Monk-turned-CIA operative Wyman Ford’s secret expedition to Cambodia to search for radioactive jewels — with a young woman in Maine who spots a meteoroid flashing through the sky — with a murdered scientist who, days prior to his death, bequeaths a dangerous hard drive to his protege in California. I opened the book, wondering how these stories connected, and I had to read without stopping — until I hit the explosive ending.
Preston’s mind creates complex characters– quirky, loving, evil, fallible, brilliant — finding themselves asking the question: What if aliens — millions of years ago — aimed weapons at Planet Earth, and suddenly that ancient machinery was triggered to fire? I’m not sure I can fall asleep — I’m so enlivened by Impact.
