Zodiac (novel)
| Zodiac | ||||||||||||
|
Mass market - USA. |
||||||||||||
|
Zodiac is an eco-thriller novel by Neal Stephenson, published in May 1988, and his second published novel.
It's a story about a young Boston man who works for a not-quite-legal environmentalist organization and investigates companies that dump industrial waste. He suddenly find himself in much more danger than usual after trying to pin an especially toxic dump on a major corporation that doesn't have a problem with making people disappear.
Personal
| Own? | No. |
|---|---|
| Read? | Audio book read by Ax Norman. |
| Finished | 2016-08-07. |
After becoming a fan of Stephenson from his later books, I wanted to read some of his earlier books as well, and this was the first one I could find.
Review
|
Overall: |
|
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- The story is fun and exciting for the whole book.
- Sangamon Taylor is a fun character who is both smart and crafty. Kind of like MacGyver, but who isn't afraid to do drugs.
- The scientific details about various types of toxic waste are really interesting.
Bad
- Although the Satanic-Panic of the 1980s was a big deal to ultra-conservatives, it all turned out to be a baseless religious fear. Because of this, it's hard to take seriously the villainous Satanists. It would be like making the villain of a 2010s book one of the ridiculous lies of Alex Jones.
- The book is mostly a bro-fest. There are only a handful of women, and they only play minor roles.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Links
