Terminus by Adam Baker
The 3rd in the series after ‘Outpost’ and ‘Juggernaut’ is set in a nuked New York. A rescue squad are sent into the ruined radioactive rubble to find one man who may have found a cure for the lethal infection that has ravaged the world.
This is not as good as ‘Outpost’ or ‘Juggernaut’; it is boring and populated by abominable people. This is all for nothing and centres on nihilistic jerks who’d doom humanity by their own spite. The fascinating back-story of the virus is barely touched on. This was a real disappointment.
Best Lines:
“Wherever the hell rich bastards spend the weekend. Push their antique furniture up against the door and stand guard with a polo mallet.”
“The disease won. Game over. It owns the planet.”
“Sitting in the dark. For ever.”
“I think Galloway has been building himself some kind of nest.”
“Out of what?”
“People.”
“It’s growing. It’s getting stronger. This empty radioactive world suits it just fine.”
“It’s from somewhere cold and dark. It’s travelled a long way. Unimaginable distances. It slept, thousands, millions of years. It dreamed. And now it’s awake.”
“You don’t believe in God. And he sure doesn’t believe in a loser like you.”
“It doesn’t have thoughts. It doesn’t make plans. You can’t talk to it any more than you can interview syphilis.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Communing with the virus. Let him be.”
“He’s a valuable asset. But he is also radioactive waste.”
~
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
Alessandra is the daughter of a prosperous cloth merchant in Renaissance Florence. She longs to be an artist but cannot be. As Florence is threatened by the French and the monk Savonarola, she is tricked into marriage by a spiteful brother.
This 2004 novel from the author of ‘In The Company of the Courtesan’ and ‘Sacred Hearts’ isn’t as good as those books. In fact, it is rather dull. Alessandra falls for a painter, there is lust, disease, the Bonfire of the Vanities and a revelation about who the painter is. This was just boring.
Best Lines:
“Luca couldn’t find a crow in a bowl of milk.”
“When you see a grown man in good health who is not married, take it as an evil sign.”
“If the Sumptuary Police had chosen to pay a visit to the nursery now they would have had the baby out of most of its clothes and much of the furniture on the streets. Fortunately we had not come to that. Yet.”