The Swarm (2004)

For the past week or so, I've been paddling through Frank Schätzing's behemoth marine-based eco-thriller, The Swarm. It's actually a German novel that made a splash when it hit the bestseller lists and stayed afloat there for over two years. The Swarm has been beached on my bookshelf for some time now, so it's been great to finally dive in. Enough aquatic puns? Good.

Anyway, The Swarm is long. Very long. My girlfriend joked that I wouldn't be permitted to take my hardcover copy on the airplane with me because it was a) overweight luggage; and b) a potentially dangerous weapon. Both are fair points. It's massive.

Having passed the 300-page mark (approximately one-third of the book), the book is beginning to gather pace. That's not to say the first third was uninteresting; Schätzing goes to great lengths to flesh out his characters, illustrate his locations (much of the book has so far been set in British Columbia) and establish the seemingly unconnected incidents that spell out a potential global catastrophe.

The book's two main characters who, at present, are yet to meet, are well-drawn human roles; each has their own personal demons with which they're coming to grips as they attempt to nut out the truth behind the mysterious phenomenon that's causing whales to attack ships at sea, jellyfish to descend on beaches in plague proportions and oceanic worms to bring about the collapse of the North Sea shelf.

There's still 600-odd pages to go, but The Swarm is, thus far, swimming with potential. Sorry.