SOJALS rating:

Awful (1/5)

I first read this in 2004 and most recently on the 27th November 2010

Hal Cousins and his identical twin Rob are both scientists and both researching life-extension. When his brother is murdered, Hal goes in the search of the killer. He finds a horrifying conspiracy stretching across continents. He finds insanity and death dogging his footsteps as he seeks desperately for the means to resist and defeat this mysterious evil enterprise.

This wasn't quite my cup of tea. It's another of Greg Bear's attempts to move out of the SF genre and it doesn't quite make it. He tries to pull too many strings together and the result is overcomplicated. I found it a boring read the second time around. Part of the problem is that I've just read Ted White's "Secret of the Marauder Satellite" and that packs a lot into markedly fewer pages (the fact that they are completely unrelated works in just any every way is something that I'll conveniently ignore).

It's enough to say, "Vitals" is not up there as a bright star in the SF Reviews Universe.