Scott Sigler combines the best attributes of Stephen King, Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton. Ancestor was a non-stop thrill ride from start to finish. I loved the character development and the story. ( )

Don't take that two star rating as a harsh judgment on this book. Goodread's description for two stars is "It was OK." (vs. "I liked it" for three stars). "It was OK" sums up my reaction pretty well.

I started out listening to the free audio version of the book, based on interviews with the author and enthusiasm for his work from others. But after making it through fifteen parts (about 1/3 of the story), I was interested in seeing if the blandness in the prose and the lack of depth in the characters was due to the reading or the writing. I guess it was both.

The author obviously put in a tremendous amount of work to get the technology and biology to a believable state. And it all makes a certain amount of sense within the world of the book. The problem is that it never came alive for me (ironic for a story about creating life). Everything and everyone is described in cold, calculating terms. The settings come across as laundry lists of geography, structures, or items, as appropriate. Likewise, each character comes with their list of identifiers and quirks, but they never quite make it off of the page. One interesting conundrum is that there are really two few characters involved in the plot to pull off the science being described, but almost all of the characters (and creatures) are used as a viewpoint at one point or other, making the story seem too crowded and jumpy.

I will give Mr. Sigler credit for creating a pretty slam-bang plot. There are plenty of thrills and the promised violence. Although I was skimming many pages, I did push through to the end to find out how things would get wrapped up. ( )

While trying to make a human transplant breakthrough, geneticists create a new animal. The "ancestor" to all mammals on earth. The ancestor is not as safe and docile as expected. Add in a psychopath boss who wants anybody involved in the project dead.
It takes a little while for the action to start, but it is non stop once it starts.

I listened to this book on audiobook read by Scott Sigler himself. He used a different voice/accent for each character, and really lets you see their personalities. ( )

Another excellent book by Scott Sigler.

Ancestor involves genetic experimentation gone wrong where a group of scientists were trying to great better human transplant candidates however one of the group is a little unbalanced. Coupled with a millionaire company co-owner who tries to cover up what they're doing by building a mobile lab in an aeroplane things start going wrong when egos clash and the co-owner decides to try an destroy everything thereby releasing all their creations. ( )

I can still remember the first book I read from this author, Infected. I would say that book did what the movie, Arachnophobia did to people watching it. It gave me the chills and creeps all at the same time. Thus, I really thought that I was going to be in for a treat and get the same experience with this book. I would say that the last third of the book was just what I was looking forward too but I wanted to whole book to be that way.

The characters were fine. None that really stood out for me. Yet, some of them kept things interesting. I just kept waiting to see what the creature was that was going to possibly save humankind. Again, I was left hanging until the last third of the story. At that point I could not stop reading fast enough. Even some of your worst nightmares could not compare to what was born. This book may not have been one of my favorites but Mr. Sigler is still a top favorite author of mine. ( )