User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Deliciously Terrifying!
Two bio-terrorism operatives are called on to investigate and handle a situation involving an isolated community (26 people) in Australia. Many years before, a NASA explorative space vehicle had exploded and some remnants landed in this country and for some reason this supposedly Harmless Container was left there. (Really?) A call came in with a claim that a man had fallen gravely ill after cleaning the outside of the unit and now there is a foreign substance leaking out of the container. Imagine what happens next!
Fast forward 30 years later. Robert Diaz, one of the original operatives is called out of retirement to again investigate this long buried deadly matter. It seems that the the alarm system has been activated for unknown speculative reasons since the organism was buried 300 ft underground using every safeguard and precaution that the government and science had to offer. The deadly organism (fungus) was stored and buried under an old warehouse that is currently used as a storage unit facility. Only the government knows what is underground and they are the only ones with access entry if it was ever needed, and it is crucial to all life forms in general for the right agents with the right tools and weapons be sent underground before this situation becomes a monster of their own making. Why would the alarm sound after 30 years? Electrical problem? Security breach? What was so important that the government buried this substance instead of destroying it? Why would Diaz be the only person to send on this mission instead of a younger soldier? All questions will be answered and so much more will be revealed if you just sit down and read this excitng, rapid fire book!
I don't have enough words to describe how much I enjoyed this book. It was fast and furious, cleverly researched and written with humor blending in along the way. I can't believe this was David Koepp's debut book, because he did a stellar job of describing and capturing the personalities of the quirky characters and the dangers that were involved for everyone. I am so glad that this is a fictional thriller because this was a crazy and scary story!
I want to thank the publisher Harper Collins Books and Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this very exciting book!
I highly recommend this book to any reader but especially those who enjoy Michael Crichton, Christopher Golden and Jeremy Bates! If you enjoy great writing and science fiction, please don't hesitate giving this a read!
I have given this scary ride of a book 4 1/2 Terrifying 🌟🌟🌟🌟✴ Stars!!
Rating: really liked it
A fun read, if at times totally unbelievable, but hey this is fiction, and it's meant to entertain, right? And entertain this book does. A fungus that has killed everyone in a remote town in Western Australia has been languishing in a contained facility underground in Kansas. The facility is then concealed, and forgotten, and a storage unit is built on top of it. End of story right? No way, this fungus has ideas of it's own. It escapes it's containers and decides to run rampant.
Two down on their luck security guards are left in charge of the storage units the night the fungus decides to run amok. With the help of a retired military operative, who tried to warn the government about the danger this facility poses, the three have to try to contain the fungus and save the world.
A highly amusing story, complete with deer riding in elevators and exploding cats, suspend your beliefs and enjoy the ride of this one. It wont disappoint.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
My thanks to HQ Fiction for an uncorrected proof to read and review. The opinions are entirely my own.
Rating: really liked it
Yikes, I did not like this one at all. DNF. I rarely give one star, I’m hesitant to because I know what it feels like (being an author). This book sounded like something I’d enjoy, and I purchased the hardcover. Now this may just be my taste because I am an author. I’m a big proponent of the Fictive Dream, it’s mandatory for the books I read. Cold Storage is written in omniscient point of view while utilizing (at times) the reminiscent voice as well (Ten years later they wouldn’t…). And this omniscient voice also head-jumps, sometime three characters on one page. There is no chance at all for a fictive dream. What this felt like to me was a screenplay with a detailed treatment cut up and interjected when needed.
Rating: really liked it
I'm terrified and horrified and that is exactly how I want to feel after reading a science fiction book!
Deep in the Australian outback festered a fungi that thrived on the atmosphere around it. The highly mutative mucus infected the small and isolated settlement of people who resided there, incubating and expanding inside their bodies and taking over the neural pathways to ensure their new hosts did their bidding.
Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz and his partner eradicated the terrifying threat by razing the area it was contained in to the ground. One small sample survived and was kept contained and chilled in an underground cold storage facility it could never escape from. Decades later, the earth's core temperature as risen and this bacterial strain is back with a vengeance. This time, however, it has evolved.
The killer virus, possible post-apocalyptic trope is much featured in media but no-one has done it quite like David Koepp! I'm not sure why I was surprised how sublimely brilliant this was, given that Koepp was the screenwriter responsible for blockbuster hits such as Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, and Mission: Impossible. This book, however, exemplifies his adaptability to be a great writer, in other mediums.
Every sentence was perfectly crafted and honed for ultimate suspense and intrigue. Reading on tenterhooks is the only expression I can conjure that will adequately describe reading this book! There was violence and gore in abundance (which are not to be read on a full stomach!), but also sound scientific backing and authentic characters, who were not your typical cookie-cutter heroes and heroines, to make the entire thing feel terrifyingly believable. This evoked the cinematic experience and is definitely a story-line that needs to be adapted. I think Koepp might know someone who could be just the guy to do it...
Rating: really liked it
Cordyceps novus had tasted humans, and it wanted more.
Cordyceps novus, a fungus accidentally sent into space on Skylab, mutates into a 100% lethal nightmare with an astonishing growth rate. After Skylab crashes in Australia in 1979, the fungus later wipes out a remote Outback town. A secret branch of the US military is able to stop the fungus and destroy it in the wild, preserving one sample in cold storage deep underground in a remote Kansas mine. But once out of sight and out of mind, people forgot what they were dealing with.
The idea for the plot comes straight out of The Andromeda Strain, but the tone couldn’t be more different. Cold Storage is fast, entertaining, and has a really fun narrative voice:
...and that dumbass deer—sorry, that beautiful creature of God—that thing’s character was drawn within the limitations of a non-sentient brain. It stood there, unmoving, as the car closed the last fifty feet on it; it just hunched there, watching Death come hurtling at it, staring at the car like, well, like exactly what it was, there’s a goddamn good reason for that cliché, so maybe it was fitting that the first thing that hit the deer was the headlight.
Written by the screenplay writer of numerous Hollywood blockbusters (Jurassic Park 1 and 2, and Spider-Man among many others), this book reads as much like a movie novelization as any original novel I’ve ever read. Recommended.
Rating: really liked it
All that hand-washing and disinfecting seems so futile when you get to see how a disease can spread FROM THE PATHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW OF THE CONTAGION ITSELF. It only takes one tiny speck of a fungus/virus/bacteria hellbent on making its way into a delicious human body, and *bam* you're infected.
Are you also a goner, soon to explode like an overfilled balloon of green sticky fungal goo? Let's hope that only happens in bioterror horror movies and novels -- like this one -- but the horrible potential is always tickling the back of our minds.
If that "but what if?" tickle is something you enjoy, then you will love David Koepp's Cold Storage. If you are already freaking out over the rampant spread of COVID-19 right now, this is absolutely NOT the book for you.
Rating: really liked it
David Koepp began his career as a screenwriter and there's definitely a strong "summer action movie" vibe throughout this book.
In short, fungus! Anyone who's spent some time watching/reading/playing in the zombie apocalypse genre is likely already familiar with the Cordyceps fungus; but this time it's been to space and picked up some brand new habits. The book begins when the plans to keep it under wraps fail.
My rating is a pretty solid "liked it" - there's nothing hugely wrong with Cold Storage, but equally there's nothing hugely right. David Koepp does write excellently unlikeable characters for when he needs to kill someone off - his protagonists could have been a little more well-rounded, though. We got some amazing back story on one of them - only for us to never hear from her point of view again. Most loose ends were wrapped up, without any annoying "but they had forgotten THIS" at the end - thank you, because that trope is TIRED. There were some loose ends that simply weren't addressed though, which does give some wiggle room in the event of a sequel.
All in all - a good read, one which will probably be much more popular than the rating I gave it. Definitely a fun read, but expect some flaws.
Rating: really liked it
I remember when David Cronenberg announced his novel Consumed, there was some eyebrow-raising in the literary community. Shouldn’t the serious business of writing be left to serious professionals, as opposed to dilettante dabblers? Turned out that Consumed was a literary distillation of an ultimate Cronenberg movie.
Now we have that most looked down upon of writers, the screenwriter, having the temerity to turn his hand to penmanship. The screenwriter in questions is David Koepp, the ninth most successful of all time, according to Wikipedia, with $2.3 billion in US box office receipts.
Koepp has penned Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World (1997), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Mission: Impossible (1996), Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), Spider-Man (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), and Angels & Demons (2009). He has also dabbled in directing, from Secret Window (2004) to You Should Have Left (2019).
All popcorn movies, of course. And make no mistake about it, Cold Storage is a popcorn novel, what used to be dismissively referred to as an ‘airport thriller’ (probably referring to books on racks in airports for bored travellers to buy to while away the time).
But this is gourmet popcorn. I inhaled Cold Storage in under two days, and thought little else while reading it, so desperate was I to find out how our hero gets to the ex-military cold storage facility in time to assist the two lowly security workers there to prevent a global meltdown from a fungal parasite brought back to earth in wreckage from the Skylab crash.
That is all you need to know about the plot, suffice it to say that, once you start reading this, you won’t be able to put it down until the perfect beat on the final page. What is so great about Koepp’s writing is that he foregrounds his characters in the action, which allows the reader to identify with them and their fate. Including Mr. Scroggins the cat.
The science bits are also integrated cleverly with the characterisation, which avoids the problem of info-dumping and slowing down what is meant to be a breakneck narrative at the end of the day, not a science lecture.
What also surprised me is how funny this book is. Koepp knows that the savvy reader will find his plot ridiculous and derivative, which it is on both counts, but he invests it with such energy and wit that the reader is effectively seduced into loving every improbable second of it.
Including the gross-out bits, of which there are plenty. It is perhaps no surprise that Koepp is a very visual writer, able to evoke both action and character beats with an impressive economy of style.
Yes, serious Literature has a place and a purpose, but so has a novel like Cold Storage, which briefly whisks one away from one’s problems to contemplate the impact of something as dastardly as
cordyceps novus on our ordinary lives.
As a side note, it will be interesting to read The Andromeda Evolution after this, Daniel H. Wilson’s follow-up to the Michael Crichton classic. I suspect that this will be a far more contemplative SF novel, as opposed to Koepp’s irreverent and fun take on the sub-genre.
Rating: really liked it
Cold Storage by David Koepp is not the sort of book I would normally have picked up. But I was intrigued when I received a copy from Harlequin Australia as part of the HQ Book Club. I am now very pleased have picked this book up. David Koepp is a screenwriter who has worked on Jurassic Park and Mission Impossible to name a few. This was clearly evident in this book, and it would also be a fantastic movie.
This was a very quick and hard to put down read. The story flowed really well and left you wanting to keep reading. It is a very entertaining read, at times dark and disturbing and at others funny and light (in particular the deer in the elevator!! You need to read this book for that scene alone!!). In the beginning I was worried that I was not going to like it, there was allot of scientific words and jargon but once I got through that I really enjoyed it. I was also surprised when the characters visited Australia, always something that catches my attention being an Aussie.
A piece of space lab debris is showing some bizarre signs and the experts are sent to investigate. This brings them to a remote part of Western Australia. When they get there they find a lot of dead bodies and a deadly organism living on the space junk. They destroy the town but not before taking a sample. This sample is returned to the US and kept in a secure underground military unit. Years later the experts are once again called to stop this deadly organism spreading.
Thanks to Harlequin Books Australia for my advanced copy of this book to read. All opinions are my own and are in no way biased. Give this book a go even if you don't usually read this genre. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Rating: really liked it
This book comes with great pedigree as the author wrote the screenplay for ‘Jurassic Park’, it also comes with great premise.....a ‘eat all’ fungi is discovered in the 80’s in Australia but is ‘managed’ and contained and ‘no questions asked’ and what remains of the fungi is then sealed away hundreds of feet down in a ‘black site’ mountainy thing.....so far so good.....the mountainy thing is sold on as a ‘rent out locker facility’ and the contents hundreds of feet down are ‘forgotten’....then the fungi ‘escapes’ and causes havoc!
The description of the fungi, how it evolves, infects and spreads is morbidly fascinating have to say and the research done amazing, however, the characters are insipid, the dialogue uninspiring and the plot follow through enough to raise your eyebrows every few paragraphs, I did read on some reviews how readers had loved the humour in the book, I didn’t realise there had been any so do wonder if I missed the point altogether but wasn’t as far as know a comedy book!!
Great idea, fab research, not my kind
of delivery of both
3/10
2 Stars
Rating: really liked it
Fun fast paced storyline. Some people may enjoy this more than I did. I think that is all I'm going to say. Fun but kinda meh.
Rating: really liked it
Australian outback, 1987. Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz and his partner Trini Romano have been sent to Kiwirrkurra to a town where all the residents were dying. All they know that in 1979 a Skylab Space Station fell out of the sky and a chunk of it landed in Kiwirrkurra, after years of the piece sitting in the ground as a souvenir, it began to rust.
A local resident cleaned the piece of Skylab awakening the fungus inside which eventually would kill the entire village, and one of the people sent to make it safe.
A small sample of the fungus – Cordyceps Novus was stored in forgotten sub-basement in Kansas, hoping that it would stay buried forever. Unfortunately, the earth heated up and sixteen-years after the sample was buried the site was deemed a cold war site and could be built on.
Now in 2019 Teacake and Naomi are security guards at the storage facility built on the grounds. An alarm can be heard beeping and the two investigate, unwittingly putting themselves in danger. Roberto Diaz is now retired but the Pentagon wants him on route to the facility to check out what is happening as their monitors are showing activity with the fungus.
It’s now up to Teacake, Naomi, and Roberto to stop the fungus spreading and save the world.
I’m not much of a sci-fi fan but I like a good mystery/thriller and the synopsis intrigued me so I jumped at the chance to read it. The book is certainly different from anything I’ve read before. I enjoyed the build-up to the case and was both intrigued and a little frightened at what this fungus could do to both people and animals – there is a great scene featuring a cat and a deer.
The book ebbs and flows when it comes to pace. The character development I was a bit unsure of as we get to read snippets about Roberto and his life and career, yet Teacake and Naomi we get all their backstory and emotions, sometimes a little too much and I started skipping over these sections as I didn’t feel they added anything to the plot.
Unsurprisingly given that this book has been written by a screenwriter I could certainly see this being made into a movie as everything was perfectly easy to visualise along the way, intelligently written springs to mind.
It’s a book I will remember and I enjoyed it immensely and read it in just a couple of days. There were times when I was shocked and moments which made me giggle, there were sections which went over my head and others that put me on the edge of my seat.
It’s quite weird because I would say this book verged on the far-fetched, unbelievable and also far too realistic at times too. You will have to read it to understand what I mean. If you enjoy sci-fi/science-based books that have an air of a thriller to them, plenty of action throughout, and are very entertaining, then this is the book for you.
Rating: really liked it
What’s your guess as to whether humanity will be saved by the heroes of this book? I think I must have misread the blurb for this book because I was expecting an intelligent bio thriller and instead I got a dumb horror story with fungus-created zombies. There’s way too much back story for the characters and a lame love story. Big disappointment.
Rating: really liked it
A fast-paced sci-fi thriller with humor. Some killer fungus found in Australia in the 80s then was "safely" kept in cold storage in the US until it wasn't cold enough...
Pretty light on the science side, but it's still a lot of fun. 3.5 stars
Disclaimer: I couldn't get into it at all on the first try and returned it to the library. Months later I found out Rupert Friend, 😍 was the narrator so I borrowed it again and enjoyed it the second time. (Not biased at all!😉)
Rating: really liked it
oh my god. i am going to be run
ragged at BEA this year, apparently.
WATCH OUT FOR MY GRABBY HANDS, BOOTH-TENDERS!
