Review: Action-Science - harrowing and thrilling!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 24, 2014
I am a big fan of action-science, and The God Particle is a terrific new entry in the genre!  It fits in with books like the DaVinci code, but with MUCH MORE SCIENCE! Which is great, and Daniel Danser has the science chops to carry it off.The novel begins back in Norway with the beginning of nuclear technology (and the immediate desire to use it for evil), then moves into the future in a harrowing chapter detailing the Fukushima catastrophe from just a few years ago. The major plotline then moves to CERN in Switzerland at the super collider, with jumps over to the US's Brookhaven collider.  The collider technology, and the search for the Higgin-Bose (God) particle turns out to be destabilizing the magnetic poles and the planet itself... which Danser details with harrowing on the ground accounts of global disasters. What he does to Istanbul is particularly painful but masterfully written!  I really like how Danser makes the connections between big, scientific ideas, and their very human consequences. He has a particular knack for creating quick, close portraits of people, so we really care about what happens to them - and then feel the shock when they are swept up in the turmoil. (He gives real faces to the victims of the disasters, which is effective and makes them even more harrowing.) On top of this, there are secret groups at work to control the technology - can they be stopped? Can good prevail? Can Earth be saved?There are flaws - .do we need to know about our scientist hero's sexual attractiveness in his youth? Really? Do we need flashbacks of high jinks?  They seem a tad out of place here, but overall, it's a thrilling, provocative ride, and I'm really looking forward to reading more Daniel Danser novels!