The Plague by Don Lubov
Publisher: Lindon Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Full Length (197 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

The year is 2040. Robots have been safely and efficiently introduced into society. They are an integral part of our world, when a pandemic of global proportions arrives.

Isolated deaths keep cropping up. Seeming random at first, a pattern begins to emerge. Dave Miller, an investigative reporter, pounces on the story.

He explores his neighborhood and city, and finds death at every turn. His investigation leads to interviews with experts in various fields. Everyone is mystified. People are panicky. The deaths go global. The world is in chaos.

It’s deep roots and is resistant to snow and buy cheap cialis wind harm. Serious injuries levitra generic no prescription or even loss of lives can result in expensive liability. Besides all, one needs to disclose his entire health viagra on line order record to the doctor prior taking this pill. Joint replacement is tadalafil 5mg online a life-changing decision and could give you a more detailed opinion. Through his investigations, Dave learns that a most unusual plague is responsible. It is swift and thorough—Three billion people die in six weeks. The immediate questions are: What is causing this epidemic? Why does it affect some of us and not all of us?

It’s hard to fight an illness that doesn’t act like any other disease humans have encountered before.

Fewer things are more frightening to me than the thought of living in the middle of a pandemic. This is even more true when no one knows how it is spread or where it came from. Some of the best scenes in this story were the ones that showed how ordinary folks reacted to the sudden deaths of loved ones and even strangers. They were every bit as unnerved as I’d expect anyone to be in that situation.

While the plot itself was interesting, the multiple punctuation errors in this book made it difficult to read. I spotted many sentences that could have been interpreted in multiple ways due to how commas, periods, and quotation marks were used in them and the sentences close to them. Sometimes I was able to figure out what the narrator was trying to say without too much trouble, but there were other times when I had to make an educated guess and move on without being sure if I was understanding everything correctly.

The medical aspects of the storyline were fascinating. One member of a family could die, but their spouse, child, or other relative would be untouched by these symptoms. People’s age and health before the start of this epidemic also didn’t have any correlation with who survived. This isn’t something I’ve seen done in any of the other science fiction books about similar topics, so I was eager to find out what was causing all of this death and why it didn’t behave the same way that other contagious diseases tend to do.

I found it challenging to keep track of the large cast of characters, especially since most of them weren’t around often enough for the audience to really get to know them. It was easy for me to mix them up even after the storyline settled down and I began recognizing the same names cropping up over and over again. Knowing more about what the characters looked and acted like would have gone a long way to help me remember who was who.

There was a fantastic plot twist that I didn’t see coming in advance. It was something that had been subtly hinted at in the beginning, but that reference was so well-done that I didn’t catch it until the narrator made the big reveal and I’d had a chance to think about what I’d read up until that point. While I obviously can’t go into any detail about this without wandering into spoiler territory, I was pleased with how the author balanced the necessary amount of foreshadowing with not giving his audience too much of a heads up about where he was going with that in the beginning.

If you love post-apocalyptic fiction, I’d recommend giving The Plague a try.