Rating: Summary: Chilling Realsim!!! Review: I thought Charles Pellegrino did an outstanding job bringing out the details. A thought that escapes everyone while shooing away a fly or killing a mosiquito, the chilling ramifications of a global insect die-off. Excellent read!! Would like to read more of his fiction.
Rating: Summary: Great premise, author knows his science, but uneven execu... Review: I thought the author was quite creative but there was a definite flaw in his narrative style. Pellegrino has the smarts, and several passages of this story were quite enthralling. But he bogged down in seemingly endless scientific detail repeatedly, and lost his way on several occasions. Still, I found the premise in general reasonably plausible, as sci-fi goes, and very original.
Rating: Summary: terrible writing Review: The premise of this book is excellent and I started reading it with great anticipation, but I quickly was greatly annoyed by the author's style of telling you events instead of showing them through narrative. Soon I was disgusted by his lack of any exposition of what was supposed to be happening. I gave up after struggling through half of it. It has been several months since I tried to read it and I forget many of the details but the memory of his poor writing remains. I consigned the book to the trash can where it belongs.
Rating: Summary: interesting premise; poor writing, weakly-drawn characters Review: I was extremely disappointed in this book. While the premise is interesting and plausible, the characters are not. The writing is "jumpy" and difficult to follow. An important criterion of a good novel is that the characters must become "real" for the reader; and, for me, there wasn't a single character in this book who did. I am an avid reader who enjoys a variety of fiction and non-fiction, and I appreciate a good book of "Dust"'s genre. Unfortunately, this one just doesn't make the cut. I almost never give up on a book before finishing it, but I almost did this time.
Rating: Summary: Nothing like a good end of the world novel... Review: Well, this is a good one. It really gets into your head and makes you think. For once we arent confronted by some inevitable disaster not of our making, but and insideous one many years in the making in which everyone who reads it has taken part. However, many reviews wrongly suggest that it is a stroy about the ecology breaking down. It isn't. It's about the ecology chugging along just fine but leaving humanity by the wayside. It attempts to remind us that we have to live (or die) in the world we make for ourselvs.
Rating: Summary: Definately above average in its genre Review: Before I start let me state that another disaster novel that I have seen in several reviews, Lucifer's Hammer, put me asleep. However, I loved Dust. If you're a lover of the survivalist mentality of the former work you'll probably hate this one.What makes Dust work is that Pellegrino does not give the reader long summaries of scientific explanation encased thin trappings of fiction, like in many other "hard" sci-fi works. He builds an all-around storng novel with a coherent plot and believible characters. The impending doom of humanity is dealt with appropiate horror, but also with bitter irony. We are, after all, getting what we asked for. The book does have weaknesses, the ending dissolves into a predictable disaster movie mess and certain characters will suddenly disappear mid-way through the story, but overall I think this has been one of the more enjoyable reads of the year.
Rating: Summary: started me thinking Review: I loved this book. Although there's lots of end-of-the-world stuff out there right now, this story still chilled me. Pellegrino manages to cover just about every form of apocalypse; he's got ecological, economic, political, and societal collapse woven into his story. The fact that he really knows what he's talking about makes it all the more frightening. Be sure to check out the acknowledgements at the back of the book.
Rating: Summary: A very true description of the fall of the world Review: This book has more truth to it than most people may realize. The book talks about insects dying off, causing massive worldwide affects. In reality our frogs and salamanders are dying and we don't know why. If we follow the book's story, were are in trouble.
Rating: Summary: Scary thriller straight out of todays headlines. Review: DUST, a cautionary tale of what would happen if the world's ecosystem would totally break down. The premise of this novel is that the mass extinctions that occur throughout the past on a regular basis are caused not by massive extraterrestrial events such as meteors but are instead caused by a natural cycle of life which includes massive population explosions by various forms of life. This is an interesting novel but I warn you that it is also highly depessing because almost everyone in it dies. I know I enjoyed this book and I am sure you will too, but one word of caution you will never think of dustmites in quite the same way again.
Rating: Summary: My favourite book!!! Review: I'm 13 year old boy, and this is one of the few books that I couldn't put down these days! It's my favourite, I can't wait to find other books by Mr. Pellegrino.
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