The Unfamiliar Garden

 Continuing with Benjamin Percy's Comet Cycle at the recommendation of a friend, I read book 2, The Unfamiliar Garden.  This is the book that my friend said was even better than the first one, and I wholeheartedly agree!

The Unfamiliar Garden takes place in Seattle/Washington State.  The night of the meteor shower five years ago, Jack Abernathy, a professor who specializes in fungus, went out into the woods to do some research.  He brought his eight-year-old daughter, Mia, with him so he could keep an eye on her (and so his police detective wife, Nora, can get some sleep).  But while his back was turned, Mia disappeared.

Five years later, Jack is a mess.  He no longer cares about his job or his work, and Nora divorced him.  For her part, Nora has thrown herself into her work as a homicide detective, bringing down murderers thanks to her ability to see the bigger picture.  But the rains have returned to Seattle, leading to a flowering of fungi.  And after one of his grad students gets sick after bringing in samples, Jack discovers a new parasitic fungus that seems to be infecting all animal life, including humans.  And Nora starts seeing a rash of copycat ritualistic murders with no rhyme or reason, which ends up leading her to team up with her ex-husband to stop them.

I really liked The Unfamiliar Garden.  The narrative was a lot tighter than The Ninth Metal because it was only following a few characters, most of who were more interconnected right from the beginning than the ones in The Ninth Metal.  

I also really liked the plot and pacing of The Unfamiliar Garden.  While I kind of knew from the beginning what was going on, it didn't matter.  I'm also not a huge horror fan, but the horror elements in the book really worked.  The plot also moves along at a really nice clip, which made me not want to put the book down (once I was near the end, I stayed up to finish it rather than wait for the next day!) 

Very much recommended.  I hope the third book in The Comet Cycle is as good as The Unfamiliar Garden!

The Ninth Metal

 A friend at work recommended The Ninth Metal to me.  Along with saying it was a fast and entertaining read, he told me that the second book was even better.  So I grabbed it from the library and gave it a read over the long weekend.  

The Ninth Metal is the story of how the world changed after flying through the debris field of a comet.  The comet debris rained down on the Earth, changing people, places, and technology for ever.  One place that was changed was Northfall, Minnesota.  The debris field that rained down on the area is mine-able, causing a sudden boom to the dying town.  Everyone is flocking to Northfall much like they did during the gold rush in an attempt to make their fortune, mining the new omnimetal, which has revolutionized the world as a self-propelling power source.

But the omnimetal isn't just a power source.  "Metal heads" are grinding it down to dust and smoking it, gaining strange visions during their highs.  And some people, like ten-year old Hawkin, are blessed (or cursed) with strange new powers from the omnimetal.

The Ninth Metal mainly follows several characters from Northfall: John Frontier: youngest son of the Frontier family, who run a mining company that is profiting from omnimetal while trying to keep other corporations out; Victoria, a PhD physicist recruited by the government for some top-secret work in Northfall; and Stacie, a rookie cop who wants to help others.  While their stories and lives seem quite discreet, slowly they are drawn together by the events that unfold in Nightfall.

While I wasn't sure where the story was going in the beginning, I quite liked The Ninth Metal.  I'm looking forward to reading the second book in Benjamin Percy's Comet Cycle, The Unfamiliar Garden, soon!