This is the complete review as it appears at my blog dedicated to reading, writing (no 'rithmatic!), movies, & TV. Blog reviews often contain links which are not reproduced here, nor will updates or modifications to the blog review be replicated here. Graphic and children's reviews on the blog typically feature two or three images from the book's interior, which are not reproduced here.Note that I don't really do stars. To me a book is either worth reading or it isn't. I can't rate it three-fifths worth reading! The only reason I've relented and started putting stars up there is to credit the good ones, which were being unfairly uncredited. So, all you'll ever see from me is a five-star or a one-star (since no stars isn't a rating, unfortunately).I rated this book WARTY!WARNING! MAY CONTAIN UNHIDDEN SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!Normally I write my reviews as I read the book, but in this case I had finished it long before I could be bothered to put pen to paper - or more accurately, finger to keyboard! By the time I came to write it, I had pretty much forgotten the entire book, which is a review in and of itself. Obviously it didn't leave very much of an impression on me! I had to go back and read the blurb just to get my thoughts on track.I'm a fan of Greg Bear's writing in some instances, but not a fan of everything he's written. I loved the "Way" quadrilogy (although I have yet to read the fourth book in that series), and I liked the Forge of God dilogy (the second volume better than the first), but I could not get into the loosely bound hexalogy which begins with Quantico. Indeed, it's so loosely bound that I was able to read several books out of order before I even knew it was a series!I think the whole hexalogy goes: Quantico - Mariposa - Queen of Mars - Slant - Heads - Moving Mars but don't quote me on that. I read Mariposa too, but all I remember of that - essentially - is that I didn't like it much. It borrowed too heavily from Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation. Queen of Mars I never finished and it's been sitting around on my shelf while I try to decide if I want to start over with it! Moving Mars I read and liked, but Head and Slant I have not read. The latter does intrigue me, however.This particular novel was a bit too much like the preachy later works of Michael Crichton - it felt too much like a lecture, or a Tom Clancy military training manual to enjoy it as a novel. The high-tech was interesting, but that's not a story. The story pursues new FBI special agents Fouad Al-Husam, William Griffin, and Jane Rowland, who team up with bio-terror expert Rebecca Rose, and find that they're in a lot deeper than they expected to be when they begin chasing what appear to be your run-of-the-mill terrorists. It takes place in the second decade of this century, which is another reason why it seemed so unrealistic, for me. It actually has nothing to do with the FBI training facility at Quantico!The novel pretty much takes the most disturbing terror attacks of recent years and augments and modifies them to make a series of almost non-stop attacks in the very near future - a building wrecked in DC, a plague attack, and so on - but the diversity of the attacks and the number of people, and plot-lines drafted in to swell this story makes it a farce more than an entertaining story of terror. In the end, it makes it a confused mess, which is why my recollection of it isn't exactly crisp, I'm guessing.So in short, I can't recommend a novel which is such a mess and makes so little impression - in other words, which does exactly the opposite of what the author intended!
Ok, I've previously drawn parallels between Greg Bear's "Blood Music" & Michael Crichton's "Prey" that were unflattering to Crichton (see http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34...) & then I HATED Crichton's "State of Fear" (see http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...). SO, I credited Bear w/ being original & discredited Crichton w/ being a paltry 2nd (or 3rd or whatever). THEN Bear writes this - a novel not that dissimilar from Crichton's "State of Fear" but coming out a yr or 2 later. NOW, to give Bear credit, I wdn't quite call this propaganda in the same way that I accused Crichton. It's nowhere near as simple-minded. It's acknowledged that the FBI has been culpable, Muslims are presented as a diverse batch of humans, the person(s) responsible for the diabolical plot are complex - they're not caricatures. That's all well & good. Nonetheless, there are parallels w/ Crichton: page 285: ""He was dealing with domestic and ecological terrorists - Animal Rescue, Earth Liberation Front, Gaia Brigade. Dangerous people. [..]" Then I look at the author's foto on the back: this guy is straight, straight, STRAIGHTER - as is going, going, GONE. What I mean is that, ultimately, this guy buys the lies of "law & order" - in other words, he's naive as fuck(less). Sorry, Greg, I like yr novels but you're as clueless as James Gunn (see my review of "Kampus": http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...). Bear gets the tech details down pretty well, has a solid wide vision, but ultimately misses out on the human stuff just a little too much. He's a wishful thinker: the American Dream, yeah, it's been a nightmare.. but, c'mon, we're really the good guys in the long run n'at. AND I ALMOST AGREE - but only ALMOST. Ultimately, for me, there's a 'dream' of people, just PEOPLE, not just 'Americans', of justice - &, sorry, FBI agents (as heroicized in this bk) are not my idea of the ones who have this dream most firmly ensconced in their noggins. They're just too embedded in American historical lies & mythology. Has Bear forgotten exactly how fucked Hoover was? How fucked COINTELPRO was? I'll take the non-racist version of the Black Panthers over the FBI anyday - even if they 'lack' the technology.
Do You like book Quantico (2007)?
After thoroughly enjoying Greg Bear's Darwin series, I started to buy more of his books. The first one I read is Quantico. It is a novel of the near future, where global terrorism has reached new heights, with the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Mecca and the retaliation to the U.S.The terrorist threat of the day is bioterrorism and is threatening to be used in a large-scale attack. William Griffin is a new FBI trainee trying to cope with the difficulties of the job, whereas his father is after a vicious domestic terrorist who has been using anthrax since the days of 9-11.William teams up with a group of FBI agents, but the days of FBI are also coming to an end since the internal conflict between security agencies in the U.S. could easily result in the dismantling of some of them, including the FBI.The book has a slow pace and seems to put a lot of emphasis to the internal conflicts in the U.S. security agencies. I personally found that theme to be weakening the book, just like a similar theme weakening the two Darwin books, dragging them away from the central theme of human evolution. It is still readable, but not in the same quality as the Darwin books.
—Levent Mollamustafaoglu
Audiobook Review3 1/2 starsPublished in 2007, Quantico is more relevant today in 2014. Within the first few years after 9/11, all forms of terrorism were like seeing 'Commies behind every bush' after WWII. Everyone was still terrified of Anthrax. Now 13 years later, we in the US are still stuck in hysteria mode, bombarded by the media and politicians with constant terror fear-mongering. Meanwhile, things much more subversive than can be fought by air strikes and military invasions may be taking place. The the 4 minus 1/2 star criticism is that Bear sets this in the 22 century. Not much has evolved socially or technically in that time. It was written with too much of a early 21st century paradigm. Bear would have benefited by infusing the story with a little more future-fiction.If you missed this in 2007, pick it up now.
—Vicki Elia
..."Quantico" is a thriller set in the near-future, focused most on the present day issues of terrorism. Like his previous book, "Eon", which had Cold-War influences, "Quantico" is inspired by 9/11 and Amerithrax, the anthrax attacks shortly after September 11th. The novel has a wide range of characters, which sometimes gets confusing when a minor character appears once, and then re-appears only a couple hundred pages later. The ending also seems rather abrupt, and forced. Still, however, the book opens a window into our current time and concerns, where the threats of terrorism and biological hazards are still real.
—Jack
