Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Simon Schuster
Pages: 384
Release Date: March 26, 2019
Not since Pandemic have we seen a thriller like this from bestselling author Daniel Kalla: The plague has hit Italy. Can Dr. Alana Vaughn find the source in time to save the world?
No person is left unscathed, no family untouched. Death grows insatiable.
Alana Vaughn, an infectious diseases expert with NATO, is urgently summoned to Genoa by an ex-lover to examine a critically ill patient. She’s stunned to discover that the illness is a recurrence of the Black Death. Alana soon suspects bioterrorism, but her WHO counterpart, Byron Menke, disagrees. In their desperate hunt to track down Patient Zero, they stumble across an 800-year-old monastery and a medieval journal that might hold the secret to the present-day outbreak. With the lethal disease spreading fast and no end in sight, it’s a race against time to uncover the truth before millions die.
We All Fall Down reads like a high-octane two part episode of an interchangeable average network television show.
We All Fall Down is told through multiple perspectives, the main character, Dr. Alana Vaughn, an 800-year-old diary, and the perpetrator of the release of the plague.
Dr. Vaughn is your standard capable female main character. She’s intelligent, physically capable, and sensual with a romantic past connection to another character. She isn’t fleshed out given much depth. Mind you, all the characters are not given much depth since the plague, it’s release, and containment are the main focus of the story.
I disliked the diary chapters. I found them tedious and annoying as they often cut in the middle of the action to give readers information that isn’t relevant until later in the story. Though, Kalla does a fine job of portraying the setting and showing readers the atmosphere and chaos the Black Death created.
The reason I rated the novel three stars instead of two is because the science is on point. The portrayal of the scientists and epidemiologists are credible and informative without being overly obtuse. The science of the disease itself and its containment was fascinating to read. Kalla is a doctor himself and it shows in this regard.
Overall, We All Fall Down is an okay read that passes the time if you’re looking for a high stakes story rooted in science.
***I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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Oh man, bothers me to read something that screams like it was meant to be a TV series
Right?! I could just picture it in my head so clearly.