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Crawlers - John Shirley Book Review

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Review Summary


Del Rey, Nov 2003, 14.95, 400 pp.
ISBN 0345446526

In the town of Quiebra, not far from San Francisco, a man-made satellite falls from the sky and lands in Suisan Bay. Adair Leverton and her friend Waylon saw what happened. She rushes over to her home to tell her father, the owner of a salvage operation, so he can try to land the job to recover the object. When Nick Leverton arrives at the site, he persuades the military into letting him retrieve the satellite.

A sense of urgency forces the military to allow Nick to recover it, but the person who comes back from the water is no longer the human being who dived. Something in the satellite changed and took over Nick and whatever happened is spreading. Residents of the town are being taken over and turned into a combination of human, machine and animals. It is a hive entity and it is planning to seed the rest of the world so it will be one big organism unless someone can come up with plan to stop it.

CRAWLERS is a horror story on a par with Dean Koontz, Stephen King and Clive Barker. It is a story of science gone amuck and what the consequences are when not enough safeguards are placed on a scientific black-ops experiment. The novel is fast paced and the action never lets up yet the author doesn't ignore character development. The people who populate the pages of this book are rugged individuals who try to fight the enemy and endear themselves to the audience in the process.

Harriet Klausner

Harriet Klausner, Resident Scholar


Detailed literary breakdown of Crawlers
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot

Composition of Book
Descript. of chases or violence - 10%
planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 40%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 30%
Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places - 20%




Tone of book - suspenseful (sophisticated fear)
FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION? - science fiction story
Lifeform altered? Yes
Kind of alteration: - Scientifically turned into a monster
Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Horror story? Yes
Horror plotlets - the bodysnatchers are coming!

Main Character
Identity: - Female
Profession/status: - student
Age: - a teen
How sensitive is this character? - sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters
Physique - very athletic

Main Adversary
Identity: - an entire race
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - an average amount
How sensitive is this character? - hard edged
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters

Setting
Earth setting: - current (early 21st century)
Takes place on Earth? Yes

Style
Person? - mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death? - generic/vague references to death/punishment
scientific jargon? (SF only) - an average amount of scientific explanation
How much dialogue? - significantly more dialog than descript
Most similar books to Crawlers
Stasis by Kelly Steed & Colleen Elliott
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
Stinger by Robert R. McCammon




Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).
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