Synopsis
Extinction Horizon meets Contagion in this sequel to 2025’s sci-fi thriller Symbiote, where the biological threat has escaped the South Pole and is now wreaking havoc upon Antarctica.
The survivors of the South Pole massacre will find that getting off the Antarctic continent may cost them their lives…
Months after the events of Symbiote, sunrise has come to the ice continent, bringing with it the beginning of the annual tourist season. where 1,500 summer visitors will soon call the coastal McMurdo Station home. With them are the architects of the classified CIA program that unleashed the deadly microbes, who are determined to uncover what happened with their experiment and harvest samples of the mutation to turn into a biological weapon.
However, when Ben Jacobs returns from an impossible journey to the Pole and is reunited with Penny – an asymptomatic carrier of the symbiotic microbes – all hell breaks loose. When the sea ice surrounding the station becomes a fertile breeding ground for a new and more dangerous infestation, Rajan Chariya and his friends will have to join forces with the CIA to fight the onslaught of infected “sea people” roving the streets. With tensions high and stakes even higher, the question becomes when will the group stop being useful, and start becoming targets who know too much?
Worse, there may be more than one asymptomatic carrier….
With a heart-stopping pace and twists that will leave readers breathless, Sentient is a thrilling sequel that brilliantly combines all the best horror tropes with real world scenarios.
Review
Huge shoutout to Angry Robot for the physical arc! I really enjoyed book 1 of the Ice Plague Wars series so to be offered the follow up was so cool. You can read my review of book one here.
Book 2 takes off running. While some of the South Pole Stationers have survived the climax of book 1, as well as the winter, there’s no reprieve in sight. If they want a chance in hell of getting off the ice they’ll need to put their heads together, to work as as much of a team as possible, and to overcome some pretty wild opposition. The northern McMurdo Station is expecting its summer influx of flights and an arrival of over 1500 workers. The CIA must get boots on the ground, must find out what happened to the symbiotes, and how to contain (or maintain) the problem before time runs out. Faces new and old will face off in this wickedly pulse pounding tale of survival. If this book does get a sequel, which I daresay is the plan, I think it will take on some real-world implications, finally making the big leap off of the ice.
This feels like equal parts Michael Crichton and Thomas Harris. It has the scifi thriller down pat, but it’s also so scientific and specific that it has that layer of detail that feels like Harris’ Hannibal series. If a zombie-adjacent contagion story were crushed into the isolated island-like Jurassic Park with the cannibal killer himself. Truly sharp writing and distinct prose make this hard to put down. Book 2 adds so much politics into the story, from the CIA to snooping reporters—exactly what you’d expect with a plague-level illness that threatens the Antarctic treaty, and it’s layered really well.
Rajan, Siri, and Keyon continue their partnership, and I think the way they move through this new layer of messed up makes sense. While they are now telepathically (or arguably even ‘symbiotically’) linked, they still have their own personalities and journeys. All they want is to make it off the ice. The only problem? Ben is not so gone as they thought, and he has nefarious intentions. This book adds a whole new layer of crazy, dangerously raising the stakes, and pushing these people ever closer to the edge of extinction. There are some climactic scenes that felt World War Z level tense.
Fast, bloody, and irresistibly good, this is one hell of a sequel that should be on every scifi/thriller reader’s TBR. If book one is about survival, book two is asking if those choices and decisions were even worth it.
Leave a Reply