Ancestor by Scott Sigler

Hm.  Ancestor by Scott Sigler definitely falls into the airport fiction category for me.  That is what I call anything that I could see sitting in the front at an airport bookstore -- high action & suspense, simple, page-turning fluff.  Which is fine with me -- though I have a friend or two who might disagree, I think everyone needs the occasional fluff.  If there was one aspect of the book that might slightly rescue it from the airport fiction genre, it would be the theme of science gone wrong/where should scientists draw the line with their research and experiments.

So my basic first reaction to Ancestor was, as I told my husband, "It's like Jurassic Park with way more human to human violence and some pretty misogynistic attitudes and abhorrent behaviors towards women".  Though I haven't actually read Jurassic Park, only seen the movie, so I'm not sure how accurate that comparison is.

My more positive thoughts?  Sigler did a great job of creating a diverse set of characters -- each character was unique and it was easy to remember who was who -- not always the case with a page-turning thriller full of many characters.  I also enjoyed the running commentary from one of the older characters about all the famous people he knew "back in the day" (ie, "Charlie" Heston, Jack Kerouac, and Marilyn Monroe) and the portrayals of Michiganders in general.

I will also admit to being amused by the same character's response after being asked the whereabouts of another person on the island, ""Did you look up your asshole?  Oh wait, your head is already there, so you'd have seen her by now."

The book opens with Paul Fischer, a colonel in the Army working with infectious disease.  I expected him to reappear at the end and he never did -- which felt like a loose end left untied.

So in general, it was an interesting airport fiction storyline that I enjoyed in some ways, but the numerous men with hideous attitudes toward women was a pretty big distraction that, for me, took away from my enjoyment of the story.