Review: New Greig Beck serial novella as good as the rest
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 21, 2013
"First Bird" is the first of a three part serial with publication dates of June, July and August 2013 in the US.  No Arcadian Alex Hunter here, but that's OK.  Instead we get Professor Matt Kearns from the first two Alex Hunter novels.  Same fast-paced writing style, same (so far) biology-based SF, same great fun.  This time Matt and others, including a CDC official are on trek through uncharted South American jungle.  The CDC doc wants to find the origin and cure for a new plague brought back from the rain forest by a now deceased explorer who found an unknown tribe of primitives who delivered to him a living archaeopteryx.  The sponsor of the trek is a big shot movie producer who wants to find this land of the lost.  Matt and his girlfriend are along for their archeological and linguistic abilities.This is a novella that at 139 pages, flies by in a couple of hours.  Naturally it ends abruptly in a cliffhanger, but what else do you expect from a serial?  I'm not exactly sure why it was published this way - probably a combination of a marketing ploy plus a gimmick to extract more money from us, and both are unnecessary.  Beick hasn't released a stinker yet, and all of his previous novels have been well received critically and (I imagine) commercially.  As this one will be.Anyway, it's only $3 for the Kindle and worth the price.  But now I have to wait another month, and then one more month to see how it all wraps up.  And I'll definitely be waiting.J.M. Tepper