Adams, Alex

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

(? - ) New Zealand-born author, now in the US, whose first novelWhite Horse (2012) has a background of globalDisaster withHorror in SF overtones. APandemic (see alsoMedicine) which proves to have been engineered by a USMad Scientist precipitates a general collapse of civilization, accelerated by Chinese sabotage of theInternet and by a war involvingWeather Control that brings near-continual rain. The DNA-targeted disease kills most and converts some to varyingly viableMutants, sparing only an immune few. Adams's tough heroine Zoe journeys through Italy and Greece to a hopeless-seeming rendezvous, hindered by a blind companion and a highly unpleasantVillain. There areMythological echoes – the initial plague release is via a Pandora's Box jar or urn placed in Zoe's apartment, while one Greek woman becomes a kind of Medusa (seeSupernatural Creatures) – and several Grand-Guignol frissons and revelations, some perhaps overly reliant on coincidence. The first-person narration is stylish and effective. Adams intends to continue this, her debut novel, as a trilogy of which the projected second volume is «Red Horse». [DRL]