Regular marked price: $24.95Discount Price: $16.47
Cost Savings: $8.48 (34%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9780307406101
ISBN number: 0307406105
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: April 01, 2008
Publishing house: Crown
Release Date: April 01, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 20411
Studio: Crown
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families.
Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common – they’ve been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.
Meanwhile Perry Dawsey – a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey – awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected.
The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.
Infected is the very first major print release from Internet phenom Scott Sigler, whose podcast-only audiobooks have drawn an immense cult following, with more than three million individual episodes downloaded. Now Sigler storms the bookstore shelves with this cinematic, relentlessly paced novel that mixes and matches genres, combining horror, technothriller, and suspense in a heady mix that is equal parts Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Crichton, and Stephen King.
Infected will crawl beneath your skin and leave fresh blood on every page.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
...is that your fanbase is web-savvy enough to game the Amazon rating system. The book isn't bad, but it's not so great it warrants an 80% 5-star rating.
The novel opens by introducing several main characters. A jaded ex-military special ops vet. An ambitious and surprisingly horny female CDC scientist. Various scheming black-ops types. Don't expect these characterizations to get much deeper than that.
The saving grace comes in the form of one hulking former football superstar(reduced to office grunt by injury, of course). While initially very shallow, his battle with the mysterious triangles infecting his body reveals the background that shaped him. It's somewhat predictable, but it gives him some breadth and places his struggle in a larger context that makes you want to empathize, despite the things he does. Chuck Palahniuk this isn't, but it's a decent attempt.
Past the scenes with the football star, the story is fast paced, but not terribly original. Even if you're young or don't read much straight sci-fi, you'll recognize plot elements from various other shows and movies. The ending was pure pulp sci fi, and it promises a sequel that is well on its way to also being cliche. As for the writing, it's about comparable to most other sci-fi writers abilities, but not to a master of horror like King. All in all, if you're looking for a fast, mindless read, this isn't a bad pick, but fans of pure horror, pure sci-fi, or pure thriller may be better off looking elsewhere.
Rated by buyers -
Scott Sigler may be the writer of the 21st century, having gained his fame and promoted his work through the inventive use of new media, but after reading Infected, it's very clear to me that, marketing genius aside, his work is immature at best.
That's not to say he doesn't make an admirable effort. This story does seem very inventive at very first glance, but his characters leave a lot to be desired. Perry Dawsey, on whom the majority of the story rests, is an ex football star turned computer programmer who wakes up one morning with a number of itching welts, which eventually turn into painful triangular growths under his skin. Think Stephen King's brand of alien pestilence without the character development. The idea, at least, is terrifying, but as poor Perry refuses to go to the doctor and develops symptoms like delusions, paranoia, and violent, murderous urges, which fit into one of the only backstories available in the book, the one of his violent upbringing, one is almost given to laughing rather than cringing as his disease progresses, even as he stabs or burns the growths to kill the "triangles" growing under his skin. Oh, I should mention, these things have interesting personalities, and they were probably the most entertaining part of the book.
Combine that with your typical no-name worker from the CDC who is desperately trying to unlock the secrets of the disease without blowing her government's cover, and Dew Phillips, a typical war-jaded 'Nam vet turned CIA operative who's torn between collecting a live victim and carpet bombing the neighborhood where the disease has spread, and you have an all-around festival of pulpy cliches.
Sigler's prose is quick and gory, but it reads like a bad horror movie, with almost all the same trappings. Also, this story, as flawed as it is, remains incomplete at the end, leaving the reader with a half-developed scenereo of the evil alien disease and it's final form, which is never described well enough. Nothing is resolved by the end of this book, and though it's supposed to make for an unsettling conclusion, the result is not as creepy as it is annoying.
Two-dimensional characters we've seen before, sensational imagery, and a quick dose of pseudo-science and alien weirdness make for a quick and amusing read, but the overall effect is tabloid writing rather than engrossing literature. There are MUCH better books out there.
Rated by buyers -
I read a lot of technical-science thrillers, however this story leaned more into the horror genre for me. There was definitely a Stephen King atmosphere present in parts of the story, specifically the chapters describing Perry and his struggle with the infection. Chapters outside of those left me wanting. The government plan to discover and contain the "infection" never gets developed enough for me to buy in. Nor do I ever identify with any of the other characters.
The short chapter style, and the need to find out what was going to happens subsequent to Perry make for a fast read that holds you to the conclusion. All in all an ok novel, but I think this would have made a fantastic short story if it had concentrated more exclusively on Perry's struggle to rid himself of his affliction.
Rated by buyers 
-
this is one crazy book. ive never read anything with so much blood and gore, its a pretty wild ride that does not slow down. i thought the characters were believable for the most part and i was interested to see what would happen to them, especially perry. scott sigler has a sick imagination but he puts it to good use.
Rated by buyers -
I think what I love most about this book is I had the fortune to read an article about various wasps and parasites that force their offspring into another organism, and somehow manage to control the host. That really validated this book, and the description of the process the author went into really sealed the deal. If I had one complaint, it was that sometimes it seemed needlessly vulgar. Maybe thats just me, and its not really that bad. Overall, top notch concept.
Find other books like this one:
