Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly timely and terrifying.
Review: As someone who grew up in the "duck and cover" era of nuclear fear in the 1950s, The Cobra Event shows us that we have even more reasons to be paranoid today. It may be another nation, or just a crazed individual, but new weapons of mass destruction are readily available and can fit into a small bag. The timeliness of the book is astounding as there is a whole chapter describing an inspection of an Iraqi biological weapons plant and the essential role played Americans. Preston's vivid description of death will long be remembered in our daily nightmares and the potential nightmare that advances in biology have brought. The plot and the pace of the book are excellent and you can't help but learn many of the important things they never got to in high school biology.
Rating:
Summary: Made me Gasp! In public.
Review: If you loved The Hot Zone, run don't walk to get this book. Though the work is fiction, the potential is real and terrifying. Some of the scientific background slowed the story down a bit, but it was necessary and in the long run enhanced the believability of the plot. I thought Ebola was scary , but this almost makes Ebola a walk in the park.
Rating:
Summary: 25 years as a EMT didn't prepare me for the Cobra Event.
Review: The internal workings of the CDC and FBI were most impressive through out the book. The pace is very quick,also the Medical & Law enforcement terms are "smoothly" written into this exciting book.
Rating: 
Summary: Something Papilo this way comes...
Review: If you don't know what does the title mean, you have to read the book first :) Quite simply, a brilliant performance by Richard Preston and his gang of pathologists, rogue UN agents and a very, very bad man who double-crossed an even worse company of evil men. Well, that should sum the story neatly. But I digress. The story, written in the style of news reports, is an interesting take from the usual first-person or character-driven stories. It's as if you are present in their surroundings but ignored, and although you get to see and know everything as they do, you can do nothing. This story is not character-driven; it's disease-driven. It's because the disease becomes the main character of the story, pulls you along with it and daring you to come close, and when you do, you'll discover another surprisng facet to this disease that'll make you go to sleep and hope that the next morning you won't have to take the subway for fear of becoming government guniea pigs. Not to be read in subways, tight places, or the open air. If you do, don't blame Mr Peterson for your paranoids.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating, addictive
Review: Richard Preston has written an excellent book, that is part mystery, part techno-thriller, part drama, while incorporating factual information that increases the plausibility of story for the reader. Complex enough to keep the reader guessing and of appropriate length to tell a great story. While there is decent character developement, the main character is the virus - and some of the information is slightly repetitive about this main character. My only complaint is the overuse of the word 'hot', which is probably due to Preston's 'Hot Zone' overwhelming success. The factual and pseudo-factual information is particulary interesting considering it was written in '97 - prior to recent beliefs and more recent discoveries.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good Tale
Review: Preston's non-fiction works, "Hot Zone" and "Demon in the Freezer", are better. He brings an enthusiasm and readability to the subject of viruses and biowarfare that are, well, infectious. But he's just not a great writer of novels. His main characters --beautiful, smart, diffident, heroic, patriotic, and primed for action-- are little more than cardboard cutouts. The secondary characters are just names. Even the perpetrator in this book, the bad guy releasing the virus, is just a name and a description. Preston would have done well to start with the characters and then develop the plot from them, rather than vice versa. The science stuff is interesting, virology and autopsies and bio-reactors. It's a good tale, but not great fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Not perfect, but accomplishes its intent brilliantly.
Review: A little history of why I read this book first. An acquaintance mentioned it was a good read to me early last week. Within twenty-four hours while reading "The Age of Sacred Terror", the authors (Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon) mentioned that "The Cobra Event" had made a big impression on President Clinton, inspiring him to call for bioweapon attack response preparations. I figured this was syncrhonicity so I bought it and started reading. I have to say, I could not put it down. I don't know anything about bio-weapons or related disciplines but this is an outstanding and frightening thriller. It is pretty gory at points but is nevertheless absolutely fascinating and enthralling. If you enjoy fast-paced detective/forensic thrillers like "Red Dragon" or Tom Clancy novels, I definitely recommend this book. I was pretty nervous heading into the Metro Center station in DC the day after finishing this book!
| 
