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Fragment

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
In this powerhouse of suspense—as brilliantly imagined as Jurassic Park and The Ruins—scientists have made a startling discovery: a fragment of a lost continent, an island with an ecosystem unlike any they’ve seen before . . . an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards.
The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins . . .
For when they reach the island’s shores, scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years.
Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking than anything humanity has ever encountered: because among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any scientific theory—and must be saved at any cost.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      It's surprising how easy it is to get drawn into the primeval world depicted in FRAGMENT. Narrator Robin Downes guides listeners to a desert island in the most desolate part of the Pacific. It's a place where a whole new form of evolution has developed, and where only the strongest survive. Downes's tone alternates between scientific detachment and child-like awe as he paints a picture of a lost world that should not exist. Truly imaginative and bizarre animals stalk the island, and all are built to survive by killing. From the tiny "disc ants" to the enormous "spigers" (spider-tigers), everything is engineered to kill. Or is it? Scientists battle the island and their own government to find a way to preserve what they've found. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 23, 2009
      Fahy’s imaginative debut puts a fresh spin on the survival-of-prehistoric-beasts theme popularized by Jurassic Park
      . When members of the cable reality show SeaLife
      , aboard a ship in the South Pacific, respond to a distress beacon from Henders Island, several of the show’s scientists wind up slaughtered by bizarre animals on the remote island. In response, the U.S. government blockades Henders Island to contain the serious biothreat its unique fauna could pose to humanity. The ship’s botanist, Nell Duckworth, joins the investigative team, which quickly finds that arthropods on the island have evolved into sophisticated and ferocious life forms. Particularly memorable and frightening are the creatures Nell dubs “spigers,” which have eight legs and are “twice the size of a Bengal tiger.” Exciting debates on topics like the role of sexual reproduction in the development of life on Earth provide a sound scientific background.

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  • English

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