Hey everyone, as the title says I just finished Frank Schätzing’s “The Swarm” (I’m German and read the orignal German book, so I don’t know how good or bad the English version is) and I just wanted to share my thoughts and would love to hear some of yours too.
First of all: I’m a marine biologist so I was very excited to read the book and I also got most of the scientific stuff he put into the book, but I can imagine without my biological background some of the things he mentioned would’ve been to complicated to really understand everything.
So, the first out of 5 parts was really nice, I read it quite fast and I loved the pacing and build-up. But after that I have to say that the story really let me down for quite a while. The endless scenes in the hotel felt like ages and were quite boring imo and also Leon’s trip to his home was nothing I considered really valuable to the story. It was a nice extra for his character depth but for me it felt more like it was taking out even more pace.
The last parts, when shit really came down on the USS Independece, was better again, but overall for me it was like the whole story could be cut down by 1/3 of the 1000 pages.
Additionally, from a biological perspective I was quite unsatisfied with how the Yrr turned out in the end. Don’t ask me what I was expecting (maybe something more virus-like turn), but the whole intelligent species that we have to kill with the stereotypical evil US Army and CIA characters felt a little bit too uninspired in the end.
So, my verdict in general is that the story and idea starts very well and I have to give big respect for Schätzings deep research on biological topics and all the papers he must’ve read. In the end I just feel that a shorter story would’ve favored the tension as there were quite some parts that just stretched everything without really contributing to the story a lot. Also, some things turned out rather disappointing and uninspired for me. I would still give the bock a 7/10 though.
by FriesischHerb96