STORM CYCLE
Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen
St. Martin’s Press
Thriller
ISBN: 9780312368036
Rachel Kirby is a brilliant computer scientist at a university in Houston, Texas. She is also the creator of a supercomputer, nicknamed Jonesy, which is being used for numerous applications by people all over the world. On her way to work one morning, someone shoots at her. Luckily the bullet just grazes her temple and does no major damage. But her worry is not that someone is trying to kill her --- it’s that someone is siphoning off cycles from Jonesy and slowing down her work. One client in particular, a government agency none too happy with the diminished computing power, is complaining loudly and making her life rather miserable.
In one happy turn of events, Rachel’s assistant, Simon, believes he may have found the culprit, or at least a clue to the dropping power levels. Before she can investigate further, she receives an email from a man named John Tavak. He claims to be the cause of her cycle disappearance and dangles a very interesting offer in front of her if she would be willing to help him get out of a collapsed Egyptian tomb alive.
What he offers in return is too good for her to pass up --- a possible cure for her sister Allie’s degenerative disorder. Allie suffers from a rare disease that slowly eats away at her central nervous system, incapacitating her for days and weeks at a time. Rachel has spent a lot of money and energy searching for a cure, including creating Jonesy to work on a treatment. Rachel makes a deal with the NSA, the government agency procuring cycles from Jonesy, and promises the agency even more power if they help Tavak get out of the tomb and keep him alive until she can question him. Norton, her contact at the agency, agrees, and Rachel leaves for Egypt.
Not being one to step into any situation unprepared, Rachel finds out all she can about Tavak and the potential cure he claims to have found in this tomb. Tavak, an adrenaline junkie, adventurer and phenomenally gifted individual, is not the type of person she is accustomed to dealing with. She is used to getting her way and barreling through situations without consideration for the feelings of others. She finds her match in Tavak. They are very similar --- brilliant, stubborn and singularly focused on what they want out of their rudimentary partnership. Fortunately for Rachel, she turns out to be wrong in a lot of her assumptions, and not just about Tavak, but also about her sister, some friends and herself.
STORM CYCLE moves at a very fast pace and will not disappoint readers who are looking to get lost in an exciting quick read. It’s a rather far-reaching plot with the involvement of government agencies, a pharmaceutical firm that would like to hide a possible cure, corporate hit men, Egyptian pharaohs, a dying sister, and one supercomputer that may just save the world. The story spans the globe, taking the reader from Houston to Egypt, Paris, Vegas and Russia with an entire cast of entertaining characters in each place.
While the story itself may be a bit hard to buy into --- it’s very unlikely that a computer scientist would get involved in a shootout on a bridge trying to save an ancient Egyptian artifact --- there are enough twists and turns to keep the reader engaged and flipping pages to see what will happen next.
Iris and Roy Johansen mix high-tech information with antiquities and leave readers wanting to know more about the ancient and technological advances. Both are covered very superficially, containing just the information central to the story. It has a very Indiana Jones feel to it, and though some of it will be unbelievable, STORM CYCLE is a satisfying read.
--- Reviewed by Amy Gwiazdowski
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