Parasite (Parasitology Book 1)

I am a huge Seanan McGuire fan. I have read all of the Incryptid series, October Daye, and Wayward Children, as well as Middlegame While I waiting for Seasonal Fears, I figured it was time to tackle the books she has written under her Mira Grant pseudonym. And so I read Parasite.Wow! What a disappointment! This is a bad book. The plot is obvious and predictable, the characters are either boring or stupid and evil, and as for this claim by a reviewer:"Fans of [the Newsflesh] series will definitely want to check this new book out. But fans of Michael Crichton-style technothrillers will be equally enthralled: as wild as Grant’s premise is, the novel is firmly anchored in real-world science and technology."—BooklistNo, it is NOT. It is end-to-end science howlers.Let me admit that for me Parasite was always going to be a hard sell. I am a retired scientist. I had a 31-year career of research on the molecular genetics of worm behavior, in which, among other things, we carried out genetic engineering of worms, including the introduction of genes from other species. Thus, I am as close as you can find to an expert in the science on which Parasite purports to be based. I will not list everything that McGuire gets wrong -- that is a job without end.The bigger question is why it bothers me so much. I read a lot of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Most science fiction is full of science nonsense: the authors just make up whatever technologies they need to move their plots and cover up with technobabble. Fantasy, of course, makes no pretense of scientific plausibility. I have developed powerful suspension-of-disbelief muscles. How does Parasite defeat me? I think it is a combination of two things. First, because this is an area I know about, it's personal. It's very hard to suspend disbelief when you're screaming "Idiotic!" at your kindle every second page. The second and more important reason, I think, is that Parasite is scientifically pretentious. It is very obvious, as the review excerpt quoted above implies, that Parasite believes itself to be "firmly anchored in real-world science and technology".Even fantasy requires some sort of internally consistent logical underpinnings. McGuire knows this, and does it very well in Incryptid and October Daye.All this would be forgivable if Parasite were otherwise a good novel. But it isn't. It was obvious even from the publisher's blurb that it was going to be a Frankenstein retelling. That's OK. Many books retell classic stories. But Parasite is terribly predictable. The first half of the book was slow. I kept looking at my kindle progress meter and wondering when the story was going to start. At 50% essentially nothing had happened. Then, finally, stuff started to happen, but nothing surprising. Already at 50% I had figured out the twist ending. Also, the plot depends on heaps of implausible coincidence.And the characters -- Ugh. The book is told by Sally (Sal) Mitchell. One of the minor characters in the book goes on at some length about how boring Sal is, and I agree 100%. The other main character is Sal's boyfriend Nathan Kim, who is equally boring. Most of the other characters are scientists, and they are awful. I'm pretty sure McGuire has heard the phrase "scientific ethics", but she clearly doesn't believe that any such thing exists as a real consideration in the lives of real scientists. The scientists in Parasite are uniformly stupid and evil, and inhumane. McGuire has had this problem with scientists in some of her other books. For instance, in Come Tumbling Down we have the following bit of dialog:“Do they not say ‘please’ in mad science land?” asked Christopher, even as he did what she’d asked.“Not as a rule.” Jack shook her head, pulling the first strap across Dr. Bleak’s massive chest. “When a scientist speaks, it behooves the ordinary soul to listen. We rarely speak without cause.”This is obnoxious horse-puckey. Scientists ARE ordinary souls, and they often speak without cause.Now, let me be clear. Some scientists ARE stupid and evil. Scientists are human and they suffer from all the faults that humans do. But McGuire seems to believe that stupid and evil are essential to being a scientist. She fails to write any character that comes across as a real believable scientist to me.So, what next? Ordinarily I would not continue to read a series of books that began so badly. Moreover, the publisher's blurbs of Symbiont and Chimera make them sound like formulaic zombie novels. But because it is Seanan McGuire, I may give her a chance.

About a third of the way into this novel, I became aware of the dreaded words on page 502, “To be continued…” Mira Grant, are you kidding me? I don’t like reading trilogies unless all three books are available to read now. By the time the next novel comes out, I will have forgotten this one. I know that I can go to Wikipedia for a recap, but most of the time I’ve already lost interest. Oh well, I should have been aware of her tendencies with the previously published, 'The Newsflesh Trilogy' . Okay, enough said. The first novel is a success, but it makes the reader wonder if these ‘tapewormed- sleepwalkers’ are going to morph into ordinary zombies. Mira, don’t do it, because what you have here is a fresh idea that should only get better in book two and three. I, for one, am tired of zombie novels. Keep your thoughts on what you started and develop it further. Your last chapter was dynamite waiting to ignite. I thought that was where the story was heading, but I wasn’t sure. The future readers will know what I’m talking about after they get to the end of this intoxicating work.It seems that SymboGen Corporation has developed a tapeworm that once implanted into a human body shields the person from sickness and actually dispenses drugs to fight any disease. Dr. Banks, Dr. Jablonsky and Dr. Shanti Cale are the three architects of this ‘Intestinal Bodyguard’ that has been ingested by most of the population. The year is 2027. The protagonist is Sally Mitchell, who had a horrible car accident, which left her in a near plug-pulling state, until her tapeworm somehow pulled her out of her coma. She was twenty at the time of the crash, and now six years have passed. She has no memory of her first twenty years and had to be re-taught everything as if she were a baby. Dr. Banks of SymboGen has taken an interest in her case and monitors her health and life at no expense to Sal (she changed her name since she has no memory of her first twenty years). Sal has a Dr. Bank’s arranged job at a animal shelter and has a boyfriend, Dr. Nathan Kim, who is a parasitologist at a San Francisco hospital. Sal has ‘night terror dreams’ of being in a hot and warm dark place with the distant sound of drums. Nonetheless, all’s well until she and Nathan run into a strange man and his dog in a park. He seems to be suddenly aggressive while sleepwalking. Sal and Nathan leave with the dog, who becomes their lovable pet named Beverly. Dr. Kim finds out that there are many similar cases nationwide. He discovers that a wand with a purple light run over your skin can detect whether you have an parasite infection, or not.Meanwhile Dr. Shanti Cole has disappeared. Dr. Jablonsky has committed suicide. What’s going on? Sal and Nathan meet the mysterious Adam and Tansy. Who are they and why does Adam call Nathan... brother? Are implants taking over their human host? Sal’s father, Colonel Alfred Mitchell, director of research at a U.S. Army research institute for infectious diseases gets involved in a big way. So in book one, Mira Grant has introduced the eight to ten main characters (good job). We know that the originally beneficial tapeworms seem to be revolting and taking over the brains of some human host. We suspect that there is a chief tapeworm, but I will not guess who that is at this time, although I think I know who it is. This is a well written piece of horror/urban fantasy from Seanan McGuire (writing as Mira Grant). She managed to keep me wide awake and feeling empathy for the characters while reading this thriller. A writer can’t do any better than that. I highly recommend this novel, but with the caveat that two more books are coming before we meet the denouement.

This statement makes sense only once the reader reaches the ending. Parasite is NOT a zombie horror novel, no matter how many people call it that. A bit like Into the Drowning Deep, it's more of a hard-scifi horror, with a premise that will keep any person interested in biology/medicine and horror (like me!) immersed and beyond happy. Also, this might be, in a way, the most disturbingly believable speculative horror novel I have read. Does Symbogen's offer seem like something people would buy into? Absolutely. Who WOULDN'T want to have better/perfect health without those pesky diets, pills, treatments? Are Symbogen marketing and damage control strategies brilliant and uncannily realistic? Yup. I think everyone should make up their own mind if they want to continue to read about Sal's adventures (I did, and I enjoyed it), but the very concept of the world depicted in Parasite belw me away.

Re-reading this book after a few years rekindled the gut theories that now are popular with evidence-based background. The forward to 'Parasite' refers to 'fringe science' in the late 1980's, ignoring people who were developing 'life-threatening allergies and autoimmune conditions... due to lack of allergens, bacteria, even parasites'. The balance to maintain an equilibrium between the gut, biological and neurological disorders are explicitly described. This is the opening of a fictional account of Sally Mitchell, a 20 year old dying on a life-support machine, legally dead after a road traffic accident. A gut parasite (Diphyllobothrium - a common world-wide tape-worm), marketed as 'SymboGen' has remarkable properties. It has been modified scientifically to not only secrete 'miracle' chemicals but can be manipulated to deliver drugs with a health and potential financial bonanza. Sally Mitchell recovers. Her memory does not. The story of her rehabilitation is fascinating. The narrative delves into the processes of physical and mental recovery that are stirring. The genetic manipulation of the gut parasite has devastating effects when released on the population as a panacea for illness just by popping a pill. Marvellous, but Mira Grant delivers a grim account in her narrative of how a scientific marvel can have catastrophic effects through the doctors, scientists and the affected. The morals and ethics smell as much as the financial rewards.This is an excellent and topical novel. It is part fact and fiction. I mention the former as drugs and other agents are currently being investigated and delivered by genetically modified viruses and bacteria. An intriguing read. I look forward to reading the second part.

As Mira Grant's books go, this one is definitely slower paced. It does have the feel of a set up for the next book rather than standing alone which I think accounts for some of it. On the other hand I still found it sufficiently engaging that I didn't mind that it wasn't going anywhere fast - I was happy to go along for the ride. And what a set up it is; I was put in mind of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds except in this case the invasion is coming from within.Under the lowering shadow of the faintly paternal and obscurely threatening Symbogen, Sal Mitchell is just not improving any further after a car accident six years ago killed her but the Symbogen engineered intestinal bodyguard saved her life. She has no memories of the life she led before the car accident and in a very real sense has been learning to be herself for the last six years.What Sal doesn't know, what she can't let herself know, is why. And how does this make her so important to both sides in an upcoming war? When the battle lines are drawn, which side will she stand on?Anyone who has read any science fiction is going to figure out in about twelve pages what the big plot twist is. On the other hand I think it was never intended to be a big twist; the conflict in this first book is on a small scale - Sal vs herself. Sal vs Symbogen and her loving but controlling parents , then later Sal vs the sleeping sickness which may have something to do with symbogen implants. As a confused character who has not had a lifetime to learn social mores and niceties (and therefore doubts that she is behaving appropriately, ceding control to others) Sal is sympathetic and well depicted. Yet she does have agency. She is frightened on an instinctual level and while she doesn't have the polish of some female characters or the hard carapace of others, she does have a well of her own strength which she draws on. I suppose if I had a niggle about her character it would be the 'I don't understand the science' aspect. But then as a former scientist I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't understand the science so perhaps that is personal bias.This is the beginning of the end; the dawn before the apocalypse. Don't expect big portents or lights in the sky, but there will be signs. I am looking forward to reading book two and very glad that book three is out later this year.

Another great book by Mira Grant and a strange yet interesting take of the future. The way in which her books are written including 'Parasite' makes you feel as if the story is real and that anything is possible. The characters are likeable and I have grown attached to them. The science behind the storyline and the obvious amount of research that has been put into this book is amazing, it helps to not only understand the characters better but develops the story into something I haven't found with any other book or author. I cant wait for a second volume, this book seems to be the beginning of an exciting series.

Arguably not quite as exciting as her Zombie trilogy and the characters not perhaps so vividly formed. However, interesting premise, based on science and well researched, well written and good enough to encourage me to read the next two. Fans will enjoy this new series.