Female salvage diver discovers ship w/ hold full of dead. Tries to discover who sank ship & why.

Did not finish ( )

Summer13:

Characters: Middle of the road for Gould. Bad guys were a bit bland.

Plot: Did actually have a plot and moved along unlike a could of his exploratory books.

Style: Seemed a bit duller than his others, but not much. ( )

This makes 5 Steven Gould novels I've read in the past couple of years, so I guess you could call me a fan. The first book I read was Jumper - this was not too long after watching the mediocre movie based on Jumper and Reflex. I think I read the novel in about a day, maybe two - same with Reflex and sometime later Jumper: Griffin's Story and again with Helm. That brings me up to Blind Waves - this one took 3 days but had a similar effect on me - these books are very hard to put down. The pacing is just fantastic and frankly, although the fundamental premise is couched in SciFi, the story itself is human and very familiar (same with all the books mentioned above).

For Blind Waves the basic premise is global warming causing a melt of ice and a rise of sea level. Displaced people all over the world are now struggling to live in the much more limited viable lands - in the case of the US, illegal immigration has caused the INS to become a powerful patrolling entity keeping borders safe, etc. In the meanwhile, the limited coastline has been extended via floating platforms. The action takes place around an artificial island off the coast of Texas, centered on one female protagonist that does salvage and similar operations via mini-sub. I don't want to give too much away, but she sees something she shouldn't have seen and gets involved with an INS agent - so the primary story arc is boy-meets-girl amidst a solid adventure setting, slightly in the future and based on the water setting. Believe me when I say this is much better than Waterworld if that's what you're thinking, and speaking of the movie comparison, this would make a solid screenplay.

As with the previous novels I've read, this one has great pacing which makes it a super-quick read. Also, Steven is able to deliver very believable characters with which you become completely invested. The SciFi-ness is very background and does not interfere with the plot (no high-minded science concepts to absorb. For some that might be a negative - for me convincing world-building and likeable characters, with solid dialog and interactions make a good novel. The love story does become a bit sappy but not terribly so (read a romance novel of one of the newer para-romance novels if you want to barf). I think everything is sound but as a criticism Steven could have added a bit of complexity to the story and made it a bit longer. That last was hard for me to say, as usually I'm critical of unnecessary length (this one is a toss-up to me but does feel a little "light"). ( )