Rating: 
Summary: An average novel
Review: Of all the works published by the Preston and Child team, "Mount Dragon" is my least favorite. The premise of the novel is very similar to The Andromeda Strain, as mentioned by another reviewer. The novel would pick up steam at points, then drag for a while, get exciting again, drag again, etc.The story revolves around a top secret facility which is believed to be devloping a secret weapon. Two scientists discover the truth behind what is being developed and tested at the facility and soon are on the run. All along, they are aided by persons outside the facility, one of which knows the mastermind personally. The book starts like most Preston and Child books -- at a rapid pace. However, until the mystery starts to unravel, the pace becomes too slow. The book then picks up again when the truth behind Mount Dragon is discovered. Then, the last third of the book involves the heroes on the run which is too long and drawn out. The confrontation between the mastermind and his adversary in a virtual world is highly entertaining, even though it does seem to be a bit out of place. Overall, if you like the other works by Preston and Child, you will probably enjoy this one. If you're a fan of science thrillers and haven't read any of their works, read "Riptide" or "The Ice Limit" as they are better works with little to no slow points in the storyline.
Rating: 
Summary: Good page-turner.
Review: The biggest problem facing readers of popular fiction is that they can read faster than Clancy, Crichton, et al, can write. So they must turn to the second-team writers to fill in the gaps.
After reading this book, I'd say Preston and Child are adequate second-teamers. The story is a good techno-thriller and the characterization isn't bad. I plan to give other Preston/Child novels a try.
[For what it's worth, here's one thought that has occurred to me many times, and again on reading this book; is it possible to write a novel where the protagonist is male, and his co-worker or partner or person he runs into in the course of the story is female -- but she's NOT a babe? In other words, if I were to write a decent story, but I made the protagonist's partner a not-so-attractive woman with whom he doesn't develop a relationship -- would the story get published? Just wondering. The female partner in Mount Dragon is indeed a babe, so we don't find out the answer to my question here].
Rating:
Summary: Really good read
Review: It's not there best work, but even so, it's better than probably 95% of what's out in the genre and in general. Preston and Child do a great job with plot and character. I thought the "bad guy" was great, and I thought the climax was very, very good. These guys write damn good novels.
Rating:
Summary: Don't worry, it's not a Stand clone
Review: I am a big Preston/Child fan. When I saw the cover of this book, I hesitated and thought "Man, I hope this isn't a 90's version of King's "The Stand". After all that book was an epic tale but it took me like a year to read and I wasn't "up" for another run at the same thing. I'm happy to say that the only real similarity Mount Dragon has to The Stand is "the superflu", "Cap'n Tripps", "X-FLU", whatever you want to call it; a doomsday virus capable of wiping out the human race. I'm not one to tell anyone any secrets so I'll just say this: This was a very well written book, It's an adventure that takes place in the New Mexico desert in a Genetic engineering lab. Yes, the main plot is working with a doomsday virus but there is much more to this story than that! It has high tech computer hacking, industrial espionage, history and legend, cat and mouse chases, and more plot twists than you can shake a test monkey at. Honestly, I was very entertained by this book. It wasn't what I expected but that was a pleasant suprise. I constantly found myself hitting a major crisis and saying "how can this be happening? I still have XXX amount of pages left here." Not just once, but several times. The book always kept my interest and every time I thought I had the whole thing figured out, the authors threw in another twist. If you like adventure, you'll enjoy this book. Solid writing and character development throughout, a good branching plot, excellent technical and scientific explanations, and the ending was well conceived and not rushed. Thumbs up on this one, not a 5 star (which I seldom give) but a strong 4.
Rating:
Summary: A good read, but not much else.
Review: I read thier first one, Relic, which I thought was an interesting premise. Unfortunately, I think they wrote a computer program to generate these plots and it makes it hard differentiate. My main problem with it is the characterizations are thin. I know, I know... so are most of the books out there. Most people think that biographical information is the equivalent of deep characters, but its not and that's sort of what we get here. Lots of information about people, some very interesting, but the plot is king here, not the people. Bottom line: You'll love this if you like plot-driven, high-concept stories with scientific information copied directly out of research papers, where the characters act and react according to the story's needs. Otherwise you probably will struggle to get through it, wondering why half the character exist at all and why the book is so long.
Rating:
Summary: another winning thriller from the Preston-Child engine
Review: Just finished Mount Dragon (now into Thunderhead) and could not put it down. These guys are good, I mean really good. They know how to create fully realized characters, in a believable setting, and then let all hell break loose. Ever since I read Relic, I have been devouring their other stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Really good read
Review: It's not there best work, but even so, it's better than probably 95% of what's out in the genre and in general. Preston and Child do a great job with plot and character. I thought the "bad guy" was great, and I thought the climax was very, very good. These guys write damn good novels.
Rating:
Summary: Somebody's been playing in the gene pool again!
Review: Oh boy, I just love it when the scientists play around with things
they do not know enough about. Someone always gets hurt when
this happens, not always the supposed 'bad guys'. In this case,
a genome outfit is playing with a 'super flu' (sounds like SARS),
and most of the people working on it think it is for a good cause.
Of course, the boss is willing to sell it to the military and to the
highest bidder. He lost his moral code a long time ago, and he's out
to make as much money of off his work as he can. Actually, he isn't
the person working on this, so he doesn't realize there seem to
be a few problems with even working with this flu type. Isn't it obvious that anyone working in the boondocks, i.e. Nevada,
is usually up to no good. It's bad enough that anyone living downwind
of the atomic testing in Nevada during the 50s and 60s, have either gotten
cancer or hypothyroidism. You would think by now, that anything
being done so secretly would ring a bell, wave a red flag, draw some
type of regulation, right? Those of us who work in bioethics know better...
Internal Review Boards are just that, people internally (of the
business are regulating themselves). Doesn't happen very well... In this novel which is more along the line of a Tom Clancy novel, one of the
newer scientists starts to notice irrational behavior on the part of other
scientists who were more or less forced into using the vaccine on themselves.
They get very paranoid for one thing, and scientists are paranoid
anyway, that someone is out to steal 'their' idea. It's apparent that this idea
of scientists working on morally-wrong projects is not new...I am seeing
it more and more in the books I read for enjoyment. Unfortunately, all
too often the public is willing to remain ignorant and allow the few to
control the technological businesses, such as gene cloning, etc. What
you don't know CAN all to often kill you. A pretty good story and plot line... Karen Sadler
Rating:
Summary: exciting technothriller from this dependable pair
Review: This is the second novel by the talented team of Preston and Child, and it is quite exciting. Following the initial success of Relic, they've brought forth a new cast of characters including Guy Carson, a scientist who is transferred to GeneDyne's top-secret genetic engineering research facility, Mount Dragon, in the New Mexico desert. He's not there long when an emergency situation makes him reassess the desirability of engineering the human genome, but by then things seem to have gotten rather out of hand. As usual, this adventure is filled with research, lots of tense situations and interesting characters. The one sex scene seems aimed to get a movie made, and does not ring true, but otherwise I enjoyed this novel, as I've enjoyed a number of other books by this very talented writing team.
Rating:
Summary: Bad science, average story.
Review: Preston/Child have fallen into a rut with mad scientists. As in Cabinet of Curiosities we are confronted with brilliant evil scientists who may cause the total extinction of mankind. All this to prevent the flu! The premise is absurd. The science is bad and boring. Why did they leave the supernatural themes of Relic and Reliquary where we could willingly suspend our skepticism for the sake of a good story. This is a very average work which could easily have been written by Robin Cook. If you want a medical genetics thriller try Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio.
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