Abduction by Robin Cook

My suspense choice was a large-print edition of Robin Cook's Abduction. This is a blended sci-fi/suspense novel from an author known for his medical thrillers. If you have any intention of reading this book, skip the following paragrah. It would spoil the story!

The story involves a marine drilling company that discovered a large sea mount previously undiscovered. They are drilling into the side of the sea mount in hopes of extracting magma ore, however the drill bits keep breaking. Every time a drill bit breaks a diving crew has to go down to replace it accompanied by a submersible. The president of the company is on ship, visiting and observing operations when a drill bit breaks. He goes down in the submersible with the chief geologist and sub commander to view the sea mount while repairs are being made by a team of two divers. When the submersible gets to the sea mount and unloads the tools, they go exploring the area and find a rectangular shaft. They enter the shaft and get sucked in by some unknown force. When the divers arrive, there is no trace of the submersible and they set off in search of it. The divers find the same shaft and suffer the same fate. The sea mount erupts, spewing magma, and the crew left on board the ship assume that all parties have dies in a volcano eruption. But this is not the case. The crew of the submersible along with the two divers find themselves in a civilization of very advanced humans called Interterra. They call themselves first-generation humans who were driven underground when a star from a nearby galaxy went supernova stripped the earth of its atmosphere and restarted the evolutionary process. Once they established their society underground, and evolution began again on earth, they felt it better to stay underground and observe evolution instead of moving back to the surface. As the second-generation humans learn more about this society, they become wary of the lack of violence, how people relate to one another and what is required to achieve immortality. The divers have violent streaks and the story is instantly complicated by the accidental murder of two Interterrans. The commander of the submarine is skeptical and wants to leave and return to his family. The two divers, the commander of the submersible and the president escape from Interterra while the geologist recognizes that it is best for her and the Interterrans that she remain. The escape attempt is violent and has a just ending.

This was the book I was least looking forward to reading but it was one that I enjoyed the most. The large-print edition took some adjustment. There seems to be less white space on the page; the ratio of margin to text block size is seems different from that of a normal book. I was also thrown off by the fact that it was printed on thinner paper and was longer than it appeared. This 500 page book was the same thickness as a 300-page normal print book.

As far as the informational value of this novel is concerned, I feel like I received a refresher course on marine geology 101, which was fun because that's a part of science that I really enjoy. I also thought it was interesting that the book included a short glossary of geological terms. I do not know if this was something that only appears in the large-print edition. My public library did not have a normal print edition when I went to return this one, so I could not check.

I suppose the reason why I was not looking forward to reading this book is because I generally do not like suspense. I am already a pretty anxious and tense person and I like to read to relax. I also expected this to be more in the vein of Robin Cook's other medical thrillers, and not being terribly interested in medical stories, I really did not expect to like this book at all. So I was very pleasantly surprised by the fast-moving and intriguing plot and the science-fiction elements. After such an awful experience with Stranger in a Strange Land, I felt that the genre vindicated itself to me with this book. It also reminded me in many ways of mystery books in that I found myself trying to guess what would happen next and being pleasantly surprised at every turn.