Sentient

If you are like me, you will have an escape plan from the building you work in, just in case there is a zombie attack. My plan is to get to the roof and use one of the ladders up there to simply steer the zombies over the low edge. This might work, but not in the Antarctic, were there are few buildings over two stories, and the landings are soft with snow, enough for zombies to just get back up again. In Symbiote only a few people were able to survive the first attack of a rapidly evolving microbe, they are now hiding in what remains of their base. Surely, something similar cannot happen miles away at McMurdo Station, with a population of up to 1500 people. Sentient by Michael Nayak proves that it can.

The microbes are drawn to the cold, at the lowest temperatures, they are at their most powerful. To begin with their simple need was to reproduce, claim more victims. This was achieved by making their victims mad with frenzy and attack others, passing on the genes. However, the microbes evolved after meeting an agent, giving the undead the ability to plan and communicate. However, they died, or are they hibernating, waiting for a better opportunity? An opportunity in over 1000 potential victims on their way to take over McMurdo Station for the summer.

There is often a pattern to a sequel, take elements of the first and make it bigger and louder. There are not that many sequels that beat the originals, but Sentient has as much chance as any other. Taking the sentient microbes and giving them a bigger pool of victims has a lot of promise, but to get to this promise, you have to get through a lot of buildup. Symbiote was a slow burn thriller, a novel that turned up the tension as characters could not trust each other. Whilst that book was The Thing, this one is more Aliens, but starts with the same steady pace.

The book takes place at McMurdo, but before things really kick off the survivors from the first book, and many of the baddies, need to get other there. We are also introduced to many new characters, who will be potential victims, or even future survivors. The first act of the book is build up, it is not until around halfway that the action really hots up and the microbes attack again. Here the book is on a larger scale, bigger armies of the undead tearing through buildings and dragging victims down to the icy depths to evolve once more into something even more powerful.

There are some fun set pieces. The book is told from various perspectives, so a chapter almost feels like a vignette as a character hopes desperately to survive. I like the mix of morals, very few characters were truly good, most had at least one other angle, not in just being a microbe, but by being untrustworthy. I even had a soft spot for the CIA agents, characters who had more than a small part in breaking the disease out. The microbes themselves are a great character. They have representatives who you recognise, who may speak on their behalf, but this is more of a total mass that thinks as one. It evolves, it plans, it kills.

Nayak has a great way of structuring the story, elements of it are as if written from a future posthumous text from a character that is in the book. There are also snippets of redacted CIA files and scientific notes. It gives the science a more realistic feel. Therefore, when the book becomes too outlandish, it does not sit well with the format. The use of animals as a weapon feels a little daft and pops the tension the book had spent so long to build. This section of the book does not ruin it, but it does mean that the novel falls into that desperate sequel trap of trying to be too much more than the first. Sentient is still a fun book, but one that is not as good as the first.