Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Rollins' latest Sigma Force novel once again combines science straight from a Michael Crichton novel and action-adventure out of the works of Clive Cussler. Add great characters, including a new one named Baako, and exotic locales, and the result is another stellar entry in a popular series. A research scientist is studying primates in the pursuit of finding the missing link between Neanderthals and humans. Her sister is asked to join a team in the mountains of Croatia, where ancient bones that could unlock the puzzle may be located. When the research team disappears, Sigma members head to the caves where they were last located, while others go to Atlanta to look for clues in the project's research. Nobody realizes it yet, but someone else wants the research and the materials in the caves, at any cost. Rollins continues to write intense thrillers that also give readers a better understanding of current scientific theories and principles (further delineated in an author's note). Rollins has constructed one labyrinth that readers will not want to escape.--Ayers, Jeff Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In bestseller Rollins's thrilling 11th Sigma Force novel (after 2014's The 6th Extinction), Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force, calls on his number-one operative, Cmdr. Gray Pierce, to investigate an attack on a group of scientists exploring a massive cave in the mountains of Croatia. One of the scientists, geneticist Lena Crandall, along with her twin sister, Maria, is attempting to find the origin of human intelligence. Maria's research centers on her work with a three-year-old male lowland gorilla, Baako, who's a hybrid of gorilla and Neanderthal genes. When Maria and Baako are kidnapped, the story kicks into high gear. Several parallel plots involve adventure fiction elements such as ancient petroglyphs, moldy historical journals, mysterious keys, and several astonishing underground cities. Rollins knows just how to balance the science and history with the ongoing action. 10-city author tour. Agents: Russ Galen, Scovil Galen Ghost Literary Agency; and Danny Baror, Baror International. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In Rollins's tenth "Sigma Force" novel (after The 6th Extinction), scientists (and twins) Lena and Maria Crandall seek the cause for the sudden bloom of intelligence in human beings nearly 50,000 years ago. They believe it was started by the intermingling of Neanderthals with Homo sapiens and perhaps a third group of hominids, but without DNA samples from these early men it is only a theory. Lena is called to Croatia to investigate a potentially major fossil discovery, but her group is attacked, the bones are stolen, and the team is left trapped in an underground cave system. At the Yerkes Primate Center in Georgia, Maria and Baako, a hybrid ape, are kidnapped along with Sigma Force member Joe Kowalski posing as the ape's handler. Two seperate Sigma Force teams follow a convoluted trail of clues to rescue the sisters. Verdict In an author's note, Rollins gives sources for further reading. Full of death-defying adventures and scientific detail, this is a fabulous read, with danger and intrigue at every turn. [See Prepub Alert, 6/21/1; library marketing.]-Cynde Suite, Bartow Cty. Lib. Syst., Adairsville, GA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Planet of the Apes meets Rockyor maybe The Big Bang Theory. Who knew that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the government think tank, had its own elite military force, as if Big Bang's Dr. Sheldon Cooper were adept with an Uzi? That's the conceit behind Rollins' (The Sixth Extinction, 2014, etc.) pulse-quickening Sigma Force series, though his nerds, "former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines," are tough guys one and all, even the women. And, oh, the women: James Bond himself would blush at the sight of an extra-perceptive assassin, her perspicacity "honed from her years as an assassin for hire," shedding a towel for queen and countryor maybe for party and politburo. Rollins commences from the straight-from-the-headlines notion that Neanderthals mated with some other hominid type to produce extra-bright kids, the "hybrid vigor" that evolutionary biologists lecture about. Locate some bones, throw religion into the mix, and you have a doctrine-shaking new view of Adam and Eve. Throw in Athanasius Kircher, the great 17th-century Jesuit scholar so beloved of Umberto Eco, and you've got your Da Vinci Code-ish intellectual backdrop. Throw Chinese mad scientists, spies and counterspies, and monkeys and half-monkeyshalf-monkeys?into the narrative Cuisinart, and you've gone maybe a thread too far in a complex storyline. But let Rollins describe just one subthread: "The plan had been to kidnap her from Leipzig before she left Germany. With both sisters in hand, she could have leveraged the one against the other to gain their respective cooperation. Furthermore, that lapse in intelligence required accelerating their plans to raid the U.S. primate lab." Got all that? If it's conjuring visions of Jay and Silent Bob instead of Sly Stallone, then no worries: it gets more hairy-chested as it goes along, and not least because supersmart silverbacks and human hybrids come to figure in the yarn. Improbable, sure, and complicated enough to try the reader's patience at points. Still, as we've come to expect from Rollins, an altogether satisfying techno-thriller. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
