Vitals

Rating:
Summary: Vital Beginning, Slimy Center, Moldly Ending
Review: The beginning 1/3rd of the book has sufficiently clever plots twists and mysteries for me to unravel. Unforntately, Greg Bear introduces a rather boring 2nd character to narrate the story in the middle 1/3rd. I found this 2nd character to be too distracting from the best parts of the story. In the last 1/3rd, Greg Bear introduced too many major themes for my taste. In the end, it reminded me of my refrigerator where all the food spoiled, and everything evolved into quarrelling intelligent life forms.

On the technical side, Greg Bear's mind controlling bacteria had a flaw that was insufficiently exploited. If you became infected, you could have been contolled by anyone, not just by the villains. Greg Bear made the mind control triggers too open and too vague for a science fiction book.

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear was much much better.

Rating:
Summary: Oops-a -daisy
Review: 'Vitals' isn't on-par with 'Slant' or his more recent effort, 'Darwin's Radio'. The book starts out OK but disgorges the main plot twist almost immediately, and for the next 2/3 thickness, he rehashes, homogenizes and pasteurizes the microbe thing with a variety of rubber stamps (unusual treatment by him).

Rating:
Summary: Very, VERY disappointing!
Review: Not at all typical of Bear's usual work which is lucid, well-written and coherent. This book started out quite strong but seemed to lose steam toward the final third, almost as if Bear lost interest in the novel while he was writing it. It's a shame, really, since the characters have the potential to be very interesting and the premise, while farfetched (see David Cortesi's Feb 24 review for an excellent anlysis) was involving. Coincidentally, I read _Vitals_ soon after I had read Greg Iles' _Footprints of God_. The premises are similar, but the Iles book actually ends better than does Bear's (though I'm not implying Iles' ending was very good).

Rating:
Summary: Promising But Disappointing - Overambitious and Confusing
Review: Greg Bear has attempted to combine an action thriller about the search for eternal life and its scientific and philosophical implications with a murder mystery and the ultimate conspiracy plot to control humankind. It is a valiant attempt but less would have been more; there are too many story lines and no real conclusion. Perhaps a sequel could sort some of this out, but I would guess most readers will not want to take a chance on repeating the ultimately unsatisfying experience of trying to follow this plot line any further.
The beginning is immensely promising and very fast paced, with Hal Cousins pursuing his search for a scientific basis for eternal life among the mysteries of the ocean depths.A suicide and murder follow, and it soon becomes clear that some unknown organization is able to engage in mind control. Hal's twin brother Rob, competitively and independently engaged in the same quest, is murdered soon after a cryptic conversation with Hal. Hal's life is soon in imminent danger as well.Since Rob is dead, we are cleverly introduced to a second narrator,Ben Bridges, to tell Rob's story until Ben and Hal join forces.After this, the science and the many story threads become very difficult to follow as they uncover a decades old global conspiracy to control the world begun by the Communists Beria and Stalin utilizing bacteria in our cellular structure for both life extension and mind control. (It has even succesfully infiltrated the US government at the highest levels.)Vitals is further confusing because the biology is esoteric enough so it is not at all clear what is science fact, what is science fiction, and what is science speculation.
There is enough material here so that a writer as talented as Bear could have writen several excellent stories, but less would have been much more enjoyable. Either a sci fi murder conspiracy mystery or a story about the search for eternal life and its philosophical implications would have been both more interesting and more comprehensible.Just like life, this book certainly leaves you with more questions than answers and perhaps it is the final comment on the subject matter that there is really no conclusion, just an ending.

Rating:
Summary: Bear destroys his reputation
Review: Sadly, after having read and enjoyed many of Greg Bear's works, it took just this one book to destroy his excellent reputation for me. With that I mean that I won't purchase another book of his without spending more time on checking out some critical reviews. I bought this based on my previous enjoyment of his books (Darwin's Radio, Moving Mars and many others - all excellent), but this almost gave me the impression that some contractual obligation was due.

The characters are not mature to begin with, and a complete lack of character development doesn't make them any more believable. The plot is really far-fetched and not given enough support (too much devil in the detail, or not enough detail for the devil?), and at one point even managed to remind of something as eminently forgettable as The Stepford Wives. And that took some dragging up! A switch of perspective mid-way through is totally unnecessary and messes up any possibility of identification with the protagonist, and the book fizzles out with a real non-ending if I ever saw one. I hope that won't be used as an excuse for a follow-up - I couldn't bear it. Even without high expectations I would have felt totally let down. Bear fans do not deserve this.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: This book is what would happen if Michael Crichton wrote a 2 1/2 hour X-Files movie. Starring the Lone Gunmen. There's plenty of paranoia to go around. What starts out as an intelligent biotech thriller, quickly degenerates into a rather pedestrian conspiracy plot.

The main idea, centered around the fact that our bacteria basically rule our behavior instead of the other way around, is interesting. And the science posited here is near-future enough to be somewhat plausible. Unfortunately, the construction of the plot is not done well at all; even the main character is mostly cardboard. He does have his moments, but they are very few and far between.

By the time I'd reached the second half of the book, it seemed like I was reading the novelization of an action movie. Characters run here and there, make a few grisly discoveries, run to the next place, rehash what just happened, race to the next scene, etc. Strangely, all this action is completely uninvolving.

I know Bear is better than this. Perhaps, in the quest to go "mainstream" with his books, Bear was pressured (or decided himself)to water down his usual style. It was a bad decision.

Rating:
Summary: A subpar effort from Greg Bear
Review: Because I know that Bear is capable of so much more (see his wonderful "Songs of Earth and Power"), it only makes this weak effort all the more disappointing.

This novel contains an initially intriguing plot line about the quest for immortality as related to the initial invasion of mitochondia into eukaryotic cells, and the interplay between humans and the symbiotic bacteria in our gut. This plot line is then hijacked (and essentially forgotten) by one more concerned with mind control. But even this plot line has some interesting and terrifying descriptions of "historical" experiments carried out during the Cold War.

Where the novel goes completely awry, is in its complete lack of editing. There are characters that move in and out of the story inexplicably. The dialogue contains lines that seem completely unrelated to what came immediately before (and thus seem stilted and bizarre). The ending fails to wrap up anything (and in fact introduces new mysteries that are never resolved). Perhaps Bear wanted to produce this effect for some reason (to introduce a sense of confusion and paranoia into his readers?), but the result is that the book is simply not very enjoyable.

Another telling example of the complete lack of editing is the repeated use of the term "Manhattan Candidate" to describe victims of the bacterial mind-control. The use of this term is never described. Bear simply assumes that his readers will be familial with the concept. But in fact, he is mixing his metaphors. The "Manhattan Project" was the code term for the creation of the Hydrogen Bomb. The "Manchurian Candidate" was a 1962 movie staring Frank Sinatra as a man under the effects of mind-control.

For such a egregious error (and many others like it) to slip past seems to point to only one thing... Bear's editor failed miserably, and thus, so does this book.

Rating:
Summary: confusing, incredible, unsatisfying
Review: This book fails in surprising ways for a writer of Bear's talent and record. It starts well, in the manner a classic thriller: the protagonist is rolling along when the bottom falls out of his world, and he's left disoriented, trying to survive among shadows and hints of awful danger.

But the loose ends are just too numerous; the bad guys' weapon is just not credible; and there's no ending.

Loose ends: there are characters introduced who just vanish, as if Bear lost interest in them. I've never before read a book where a character (Mrs. Callas) is carefully introduced, has a lot of dialog, and then says "I don't like your chances and I want out" -- and walks out of the story!

But the biggest problem for me was the simply incredible details of the mcguffin, the bacterial stealth weapon. Altered gut bacteria that make people sick, or that poison their brain chemistry to make them unstable or credulous, that I could credit. But I cannot credit that such a blunt tool could do the precision work of forcing a person to commit explicit behavior -- like, make a person go and shoot, or sic dogs on, a specific person.

There are horrifying details of a supposed Soviet experimental camp, but the details don't hang together -- how could such effects result from the suggested mechanism, and what possible political ends could be served by continuing such experiments until everyone was dead?

And there's a lot of business about people getting calls that seem to be from dead loved ones. What's the point? How is that supposed to result from, or interact with, their bacterial poisoning? There are several references to bacterially "tagged" victims being given lists of numbers to memorize, and these numbers cause specific reactions. Bacteria that do arithmetic?

There are apparently minor characters who turn up in totally unlikely places with no explanation (What the heck is Betty Shum doing on Lemuria?). There are mysteries that are carefully and explicitly planted (the 1949 picture of Rudy) and never resolved or explained. Indeed, there is an Epilog that consists mostly of the protagonist reviewing all the questions that were never answered, and they are numerous -- and remain unanswered.

In short, the furniture of this book just doesn't hang together; and that is death to a science-fiction story. It's just weirdness piled on weirdness, with no coherence or sense. Maybe since "The X Files" this is an accepted mode of SF storytelling, but I can't buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Sci-Fi
Review: I suppose that I can understand some of the negativity of many of these reviews, but I certainly can't agree with it. I thought Vitals was terrific, one of the most interesting books I'd read in years. It has a lot of different qualities, but I was most reminded of Mel Gibson's movie Conspiracy Theory. In both, the protagonist isn't particularly likeable--although Bear's Hal Cousins is certainly more stable (most of the time) than Gibson's character. In both, the audience is never quite sure what is real and what isn't. Both are action filled, frightening, horrifyingly plausible, and deliver at the end. Vitals even delivers three times, with big, unexpected climaxes like a series of punches to the gut.

Now, as to the "flaws": Bear is a writer who has almost always demanded a lot of his readers. This isn't casual sci-fi, not space opera; in fact, until about two-thirds of the way through the book it's scarcely sci-fi at all. Hal Cousins, the protagonist, is thrown into a series of bizarre events and spends much of the novel scrambling desparately to make sense of an insane situation. In these passages, Bear reveals little, allowing the reader to share Cousins' confusion. Perhaps the action-orientation of these parts put off some of Bear's regular readers. After about 1/4 of the book, Bear changes point-of-view and time, and certainly I found this disorientating. Given that at this point Bear goes back in time and deals not with Hal Cousins, but with his twin brother Rob, also a scientist in the same field, confusion is understandable. Granted, everything is labelled, but I did have to look back when it became apparent to me that I'd glossed too much, and evidently I wasn't alone in this. But for me it's the only real flaw in the book, and the solution's simple--read more carefully! By the time we are back with Hal Cousins, things become extremely intense. The story takes a sci-fi twist that those readers who are more action oriented might find hard to follow. Bear has created a chilling but complex premise, and from there, everything else flows logically and with the inevitability of a Greek Tragedy, minus the deus ex machina. If you're looking for light entertainment, look elsewhere. But for a gripping, creepy and thoughtful read, you can't do better than this. I'd also recommend Maelstrom by Peter Watts as similar in tone.

Rating:
Summary: Oh, this was a frustrating book.
Review: Great idea. Wonderful setup. I loved the characters-- found them darker and more interesting than Bear characters usually are. I was *entranced* for the first one third of the book.

Unfortunately, the success of the setup is only matched by the failure of the execution. The conspiracy theory gets so confused that by the end I had completely lost track of who was doing what-- unfortunatly I no longer cared enough to go back and figure it out more carefully. What was interestingly complex became tortured and convoluted and in the end it was dragged down by its own weight.

This said, I did find it an interesting new direction for Bear and there are aspects of it I hope to see picked up and followed through on in a later book.