Reviews

Things I liked: I liked the writing of the graduate students. They were all, in their own way, insufferable. As a recent graduate myself I can confirm that STEM graduate students are all insufferable. I liked the way the authors described the "micro world" and I liked the addition of the ticking clock that is the "micro-bends", a condition that causes hemophilia-like symptoms to occur in living organisms that remain in the micro world for too long. I liked the students questioning the mechanics of being shrunk, because I had those same exact thoughts right after they were shrunk. "Are their atoms shrunk with them? Is the space inside the atoms shrunk? If their atoms aren't shrunk did they get removed? If their atoms aren't shrunk how are they breathing and eating regular sized atoms?"

What I didn't like: It is completely unrealistic that an ethnobotanist (Rick), arachnologist (Karen), entomologist/coleopterist (Erika), botanist (Amar), biochemist (Jenny), and herpetologist? (Peter) are all in the same lab. No fucking way. It would have been so easy to just say they were in different labs, but became friends through shared classes and closeness of their labs. Karen and Erika could have been lab mates, and Rick and Amar could have been as well. No lab has all these different studies going on that have no shared factors. I understand that Danny is an important character to continue the conflict, but he is such a fucking drag to read about as soon as he starts whining I want to just skip to more interesting bits. The authors also have the graduate students give out paragraphs of information when they come across something in their field of study sounding like it comes from a textbook, which is true to form for some graduate students, but it not a fun reading experience. No one ever enjoyed reading or writing a scientific paper. This could also be due to the fact that Richard Preston is primarily a nonfiction author.

My main beef with the book is that they spend a lot of time with Peter, and then throw that away 60% through the book. He is the character that most of the plot surrounds. His parents died, so it is only him and his brother, now his brother is supposedly dead and he wants to find who did it. That was the plot throughout the book that kept me coming back even when all the other students annoyed the crap out of me. Then, 60% into the book, they kill him off. Now there will be no true satisfaction in the end. We already know Drake was involved in the brother's murder, but with peter dead, there is no satisfactory resolution to his arrest/death since the person who wants it is no longer part of the story. I looked up the ending on wikipedia just so I could rest knowing that I was right in ending it, and, just like I predicted, the brother is actually alive. Except that revelation isn't really joyous anymore, since Peter is dead and will never reunite with his brother.
The ending leaves 2 of the 7 students alive, and they end up falling in love with one another, but those students are some of the more annoying ones. Rick is constantly bragging about his past expeditions and starts fights when he gets embarrassed by some of the other students, and Karen starts fights to hide her fear, and purposefully teases other students to make them upset, resulting in people getting hurt or dying. So, I really don't care that they get the happy ending, I would rather Peter makes it through and reunites with his brother, the only family he has left in this world. But the authors decided to kill him for shock value.

Content Warnings