Ron's comments about Quantico (shorter version of our conversation about this book on the podcast : 59 www.beameup.podomatic.com)
Paul, I enjoyed yakking away today about Quantico by Greg Bear. I couldn't call it my review so much as my impressionist rant. The Thinking Man's Tom Clancy, I recollect saying. Quantico is a good read for those (like me) that like that sort of near future action adventure.
True to that genre, coincidences pile up, major characters survive unsurvivable crashes and explosions, and murderer-wannabes are thwarted by a sudden need to declaim at length to helpless prisoner Rebbecca before delivering the lethal stroke, giving the cavalry time to come to the rescue.
But those are practically de rigeur for the AA genre. Bear's futurist equipage for the large cast of characters is entirely believable or at least suspension-of-believable: the neo-blackeberry 'slates', the mini-UAV 'midges' ; characters on the whole believable; the Arab-bashing is within present-day American norms--though Bear is fairly merciless in Quantico to middle easterners of all types.
I liked the meeting of the protagonists and supporting characters with Madame President. It powerfully depicts the personality stresses of such a gathering.
As Chief Villain, Lawrence Winter was rather interesting - starting off as your basic merciless amoral maniac, then going through a sort of flowers-for-Algernon decline and fall into final irrelevancy for his hubris.
I look forward to reading more of Greg Bear's works.
