Cindy's Reviews > The Swarm

I'm wavering between 2 and 3 stars for this Crichton-esque brick of a sea-thriller.

On one hand you have whales, crabs, dolphins, sea worms, shoals, and sharks galore. All awesome. Oh and the top fru-fru Parisian restaurant infested with gooey lobsters. Right on. Also, there's some interesting thoughts on life-forms, consciousness, collectives and intelligence. I'll be thinking about those ideas for a while, even if they aren't anything new. The thriller and horror part of the story was plenty interesting to keep me turning the pages quickly.

On the other, much angrier sullied hand, you have obscene amounts of political, environmental and philosophical/religious pontification, aimed both directly at the reader and through the super-genius-beautiful-yet-one-dimensional cast of characters. Gah. I was so looking forward to a scientific thriller in translation that presented a multi-national cast and world view. The Swarm has this in spades, but also is incredibly one-sided in its vehement anti-US stance. The rest of the world is beautiful, intelligent, and rational. The US, however, is the source of all the world's woes, including inventing conspiracy theories?! I have lived for over 4 years in other countries, and it's dead easy to vilify the US. But the thing is all countries and their citizens have both bad and good virtues. No one is perfect, just like no country as a whole is pure evil. To portray the US as the latter is lazy characterization, an cheap shot and frankly just immature.

Finally, last gripe: the science is beyond sketchy. Schätzing clearly has done a ton of research (he packed every last detail of it in the book - that's why it's over 800 pages!). Yet he gets so much of the science wrong. Methane does not smell like rotten eggs - it's odorless.

I really like Jay's review that said that:
The Swarm:Science :: Da Vinci Code:Religion

That pretty much sums it up. :)