Critical: Prey

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Prey is, quite honestly, a goofy concept. I joked the other day that the concept of a cloud of sentient nanobots is just too bizarre to believe in, while cloning dinosaurs and earthquake machines was perfectly acceptable, but that's honestly the truth. My brain can logically accept that dinosaur dna could theoretically be obtained from mosquitoes in amber, and the idea that natural disasters can be caused by man-made machines is a bit Super-villainy for my tastes, but it's not outside the realm of believability. But a swarm of nanobots just crosses the point where my brain can no longer pretend this is possible.

Mind you, I am not entirely opposed to the concept of the nanobots presented early in the book. If I accept the Smoke Monster on Lost (which probably isn't really a cloud of nanobots [at least, I don't think it is, but who the hell really knows?] but the idea of a floating smoke that can produce images on its surface is the same general idea) then I can accept Prey's swarms, and I do. Had the book ended with the descent into the Nest and the destruction of the swarm, I'd probably think more highly of this. But instead, it veers off into Body Snatcher territory, with a "benign swarm" taking root inside of people and controlling their actions. Sorry, do not pass Go, do not collect your credibility.

On the other hand, I finished the 500 page book in two days, so I can't claim that it isn't a fast read, and while it's not believable like Jurassic Park (relatively speaking, of course), as a thriller it's got merit. The idea of man being hunted by his own creation is an oldie but a goodie and although some characters are basically Red Shirts that is kind of the point of a B-level monster tale, so that is easily forgiven.

If you have a day or two to kill, you could certainly pick worse.