I’m going to be honest with you. I picked up Extinction because of the cool cyber arm on the cover. I have a real weakness for Sci-Fi Espionage stories, and I guess I just have good instincts because Extinction ended up being a member of that rare genre, and an excellent one at that! Extinction uses very topical world events such as the War on Terror, Wiki-Leaks, and Artificial Intelligence as a foundation to explore the boundaries between man and machine, and reveals the line to be more ethereal than one may assume, and on a more haunting note, may vanish via our own misguided machinations.
What I find myself most enamored with in Extinction is the pacing. Mark Alpert can jump from intense action sequences, to lingering suspense, to genuinely haunting moments without missing a beat. He even does exposition well. The first chapter just involves protagonist Jim Pierce explaining the mechanics of his cyber arm prosthesis to a patient, a soldier who had lost both arms in Iraq. Jim reveals that he was a soldier as well, explains how he lost his arm and how and why he went about building his highly technical new model. And even though this is a transparent exposition dump to introduce the protagonist and the technology in play, it totally works. You aren’t taken out of the story because, well, doctors do this. A doctor would surely try to relieve a patient by relating to their trauma, and a doctor would definitely describe the mechanics of a procedure in great detail. The structure of this story is solid.
Any science or computer buff is going to get a kick out of how technical Extinction can be when it explains how the technology in the story functions. You can tell that Alpert did his research with this story, and it pays as both a compelling lesson on information technology and also in fleshing out the atmosphere of the story. You’ll find yourself questioning whether the technology on display actually exist, and then why not. Considering this is a story revolving around Intelligence organizations like CIA and NSA, I suspect that this was intentional, but effective regardless.
I do have to criticize Extinction for one thing though, and that would be the actual writing. At times Extinction lacks a certain . . . eloquence that can pull you out of a serious moment at the mercy of your own laughter. For instance there is a character that Jim interacts with whom we only know as “a jerk.” No description, no similes for the word jerk, just “A jerk.” They speak long enough for both characters to exchange a few lines of dialogue but not enough for Jim to notice anything about the man's build aside from "Yep, that's a jerk, alright." This happens a lot and as much as I dislike bombastic writing, it can come off as sloppy.
That said I loved Extinction and highly recommend it to lovers or Sci-Fi and Espionage alike!
5 Stars
