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In DARWIN¹S RADIO, the predecessor to this book DARWIN¹S CHILDREN, a virus known as SHEVA infected pregnant woman and brought about a generation of a new type of children. These youngsters were born with some extra senses, coloring, and marking differences. The country turned away from these children in fear, not certain if this virus-changed generation of humans might hold within their makeup the means to infect and kill the rest of the world. Because it was feared that these virus children might bring about the end of the human race as it had been known, the government issued a special directive to keep them separated from the rest of society. It was hoped that any disease they might generate would be studied and stopped before the outside population could be infected. This book starts a few years after the first wave of these children are born. While the rest of the country's scientists and politicians are still fighting over what the appearance of these offspring really means for human kind, Mitch Rafelson, an anthropologist and Kaye Lang, a molecular biologist specializing in retroviruses, are raising one of these children. Unfortunately, in order to stay together, they and their much beloved daughter, Stella, must go from hiding place to hiding place. They have to always be one step ahead of people who would turn Stella in because the government has ordered all the new children to be gathered up. Soon, Stella is found, taken by the government and put into one of the many camps that hold the generation of new children. The rest of the book follows Stella's life and how Mitch and Kaye struggle to find and make contact with their daughter again. Science and social problems abound in this book. Politics, prejudice, and fear dictates the day-to-day life of the people we find within these pages. Finally, a Divine presence infiltrates one of the characters and mankind uncovers that its future reflects its past. DARWIN¹S CHILDREN is a sequel to the first popular book DARWIN'S RADIO. I suspect that the author, Greg Bear, must have already created a bond between his characters and the reader because in this second book, he takes the interest of the readers for granted. There's little reason for the new readers to feel any investment in the characters we come across. We are presented with many, many, people and are told what work they are doing and what they are searching for but no emotional bridges are built. We meet and see many people who grow old in the book, and some die, but there are few that the readers care about. Greg Bear makes the science clear enough but he tends to leave the readers to find a reason to care about the whirlwind of social problems in this alternative world of the very near future. The audio book is rather choppy, with a few minutes devoted to a location and a character. Snippets of information and a description of the character¹s problem is touched on and then we are flipped onto the next person and problem. Just as we start to feel comfortable with one situation, we are taken to another place, and sometimes we are pushed forward to a time in the future. That makes it difficult for the audience to truly know any of the main characters. Jeff McCarthy is the narrator of this audio book and has done a wonderful job. His voice never intrudes in the story. He does as good a piece of work as can be expected with all the different voices of the very many people included in every chapter. Some characters are important but many are very peripheral and completely forgettable, but McCarthy¹s is up to the task. By the end of the book, I still did not care about most of the people. The story tries to be a social and religious commentary on the state of the world but nothing much happens and there is no true wrap-up of the tale. I can almost see a meandering third book being penned and it would simply follow the next decades of the story. All in all, by the end of DARWIN¹S CHILDREN all we learn is that the main endowments that virus children seem to have been born with are needs that are more social. The craving to smell, touch, and be with others of their kind seems to be their overwhelming difference. I still cannot quite understand how that is a step forward in evolution. If you read DARWIN¹S RADIO, you might like this book, but as a stand-alone, DARWIN¹S CHILDREN should be left alone.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, May 2003
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