Contagion

Our Review

Contagion by Terri Terry left me with mixed feelings because it was of a similar nature to a book I read earlier in the year which I felt was slightly better. However, having said that I am not saying that I didn’t enjoy Contagion, just that I enjoyed Defender more.

Contagion begins with a chapter written from the point of view of Xander. This chapter deals with some kind of incident which leads to the outbreak of the mysterious disease. All the reader knows is that the fail safes have failed and that as a result Xander is somehow changed.

His new gifts enable him to see the ‘unique pattern’ that exists within every person and is “more individual than fingerprints.” He thinks what he can see is similar to their soul. Their Vox I call it, a voice they do not know they have.

The rest of the book is told from the point of view of ‘Subject 369X” (Callie) or a girl named Shay.

We first meet Subject 369X when she is being taken away by people in suits to be ‘cured.’ They say I’m sick, and I need to be cured. But I don’t feel sick. Not anymore.

Something that the people in suits have done to her has made her struggle with her memory but the one thing she can remember is her name, ‘Callie.’ She holds on to her name as the painful cure starts.

Shay lives in a place called Killin in Scotland. Whilst in the local shop one day she spots a poster for a girl who has been missing for a year and realises she saw her about a year previously. She takes the poster and calls the girl’s brother, Kai.  The girls name is Callie.

Meanwhile, Callie is watching in wonder as her own body burns.

“Am I dead?

I must be musn’t I?

I stand in fire, and feel no pain.

Living things can’t do that.”

After watching someone hoovering up her ashes, labelling them and hanging them up, she knows for sure she is dead.

Callie goes into a panic when she realises that she can’t just pass through walls but eventually she realises that she can get out as long as she follows someone. As she is leaving she sees the beginnings of a strange illness taking over the doctors and nurses who had been looking after her and people start collapsing.

Callie sets off in search of the doctor who was in charge but when she can’t find him she decides to head home to her family if only she can remember how to find them.

Back in Killin, Shay and Kai meet up and set out in an attempt to find Callie but will they manage before they too succumb to the virus? A virus which infects 95% of people and kills 90%of those who have been infected.

On the whole,  this was an interesting and highly readable book and I will be reading the sequel.

 

Our Final Rating...

Tue, 16th May 2017