Book Log 2014 #15: The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan

I find it fairly easy to suspend disbelief when I read, which is a good thing with a book like this, in which a man frozen in a specific type of arctic ice is reanimated by a process developed by a well-known scientist. While the scientist looks to take the Boston-based project to the next level of funding, the unfrozen man is mainly tended to by a female scientist, who becomes his link to the modern world.

But over the course of the book, little factual errors started to nag at me. The unfrozen man and the female scientist go to a Safeway.  The closest Safeway to Boston appears to be in the Philadelphia area. There's another plot point involving the unfrozen man knowing the words to the Dropkick Murphys song "Tessie," which the book presents as the same song sung by the Royal Rooters in the early 20th century. It's not.

And then it's on to bigger questions. There's little work done to trace the man's family, which is odd given how easily a lab like this could prepare DNA samples and do some basic online research into his family. This is kind of covered by the main scientist's lack of interest in the human element of the project, which then raises an even bigger problem when you consider how thinly drawn the lead scientist and the female scientist are. The main scientist is an extreme caricature of the type, while it's a little on the nose to have the female doctor be the one to create a strong emotional connection.

Funny thing is, I still kind of liked the book. Much of it is solid storytelling, and some of the supporting characters are interesting. But one things started to cascade, it was hard for me to not get annoyed at little things, or even big things (the ending seems pretty implausible to me, which is kind of a funny thing to say about a book starring a reanimated human). You may have better luck with it if you're not from Boston, or get less hung up on the details.