Cold Storage
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4.0 • 45 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
‘Gruesome, terrifying, pulse-pounding’ Stephen King
Shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller of the Year
‘Pure, unadulterated entertainment’ New York Times
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction.
Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. And only Diaz knows how to stop it.
He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards – one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again … before it’s too late.
For fans of Dean Koontz and Stephen King
***
Praise for Cold Storage:
‘When the real apocalypse arrives, may it be even half as funny as this’ Linwood Barclay
‘A gripping, fast-paced outbreak thriller’ Sci-Fi Now
‘A chilling first novel [with] cinematic flair … it’s scary, and a great deal of fun’ Daily Mail
‘A novel that reads like one of [Koepp’s] movies: occasionally frightening, often humorous and always fast-paced’ Mail on Sunday
‘The book’s strengths include the Stephen King-like way humour is interwoven with horror and Koepp’s enthralling conjuring of the fungus, which becomes as vivid as its human co-leads’ Sunday Times Culture
About the author
David Koepp is a celebrated American screenwriter and director best known for his work on Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Panic Room, War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible. His work on screen has grossed over $6 billion worldwide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Screenwriter and director Koepp makes his fiction debut with a sensational SF thriller. In 1979, Skylab, the first NASA space station, crashes into the Indian Ocean, with a piece landing in Western Australia. Aboard Skylab is a highly adaptive fungal organism, Cordyceps novus, which was sent into space as a research project. Once back on Earth, the organism starts to evolve into a sentient killer that sees humankind and all other life-forms as nourishment. In 1987, USAF Maj. Roberto Diaz, a Defense Nuclear Agency operative, manages to contain the organism after it decimates a remote Australian community in nightmarish fashion. In 2019, Diaz, who's now retired, receives the midnight call he's been dreading the remnants of the organism, buried far underground inside a former military installation in Kansas, may have escaped. Diaz rushes from his North Carolina home to Kansas, where he joins two security guards in battling the menace. Breakneck pacing and nonstop action compensate for the predictable story line and the occasional contrivance. Michael Crichton fans won't want to miss this one.
Customer Reviews
It grows on you
Author
American screenwriter and director. Think Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Panic Room, War of the Worlds, Mission: Impossible, yada yada: grossing over $6 billion worldwide.
Premise
Extra-terrestrial mutant fungus wakes up from a long nap, ready to rumble.
Plot
Fungus returns to Earth in Skylab debris. Wipes out small Aboriginal community in outback Western Australia after the dude who found the container it was in decides to give it a polish. US covert operatives fire bomb the area, neutralising the threat, but take home a sample for further study, as you would. Not for germ warfare, though. No way. None of that. Turns out the fungus is too hot to handle. They bury it deep beneath an army facility in Kansas next to a cold spring, which keeps it on ice for 30 years until—wouldn't you know it--global warming defrosts it a tad. By then, the army has sold the site to a storage company. Two minimum wage employees--an ex-con and a single Mom he has the hots for--investigate a mysterious beeping noise and discover all Hell breaking loose, assuming your concept of Hell involves green, slimy ooze that invades your body till it blows up like that guy from Willy Wonka. There are also bikies with stolen flat screen TVs, and the Little Old Lady from Pasadena with a gun. The surviving dude from the original discovery, who is retired now, rides to the rescue, which involves...never mind. You wouldn't believe it from me. Over to you, Mr Koepp.
Prose
Reads like a screenplay (surprise, surprise). Good pacing. Action and pseudoscientific techno-babble aplenty. Mordant humour with abundant funny lines.
Characters
Limited character development, more than your average action movie perhaps, but I'm sure they can edit that out. I would like to have heard more from the fungus's POV.
Bottom line
It's not literature, and doesn't purport to be, but it is entertaining.
Cold storage- good review to read!
This is a great summer read!, it grows on you, it’s thrilling and it’s page turning. It’s pretty Comedic as your crapping your pants, but nothing written so stunningly that you would call it a “Classic”or a piece of “Literature.”
So if u like a kind of thriller comedy, could make a pretty-cool-movie-spin-off, read-in-a-week, type book
this is perfect!!
My stars mean
⭐️- ridiculous
⭐️⭐️- it was ok.. and i could see the idea/potential.. B grade reads that pass time
⭐️⭐️⭐️- great, well done would recommend to specific ppl :))
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- STUNNING, what a trip!! A book that captures you and is gorgeous with their storyline plots and turns and developments.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- a piece of literature 😍 like a Four Star but With stunning character development and prethought.. it has storyline’s in storyline’s and incredible and believable world building.
and mind KIDNAPPING adventurous writing.