What a wild ride of a book! The action begins on a ship, the Trident, which has been chartered by the producer of a reality show called SeaLife. It features a cast of young twenty-something scientists including Nell Duckworth, who wanted to be on the show in the hope of exploring the ecosystem of a mysterious island known as Henders Island out in the middle of the Pacific. She gets her wish as the ship picks up a distress signal from an EPIRB and the captain is asked to go to try to give assistance. All of this, of course, is being filmed. As they get to the island, the cast and a cameraman make their way up to the top, and, as the cameras are rolling, something awful and incredible happens. The footage that is viewed all around the world sparks an incredible controversy around whether or not the whole thing was a hoax. Our government, however, has to see for itself, and only days later Nell and a team of specially-picked scientists are landed on top of the island in vehicles and a lab specially built for NASA. What they discover could alter the course of our world as we know it. I will not, absolutely not, say anything more, because it will kill the suspense for anyone else who might want to read it.

There  is a lot of nonstop action in this book, and once I started it, I literally could not put it down. The suspense keeps you going until the end. The characters are a bit stereotypical -- the producer, who doesn't care about anything else but getting the footage, the quirky scientist, the fame-grabbing, pop-culture, vengeful toad of a pseudo-scientist who knows if word gets out about the truth of the island it's all over for his career -- but it's the author's first novel so you can make allowances. Also, some of the dialogue gets a bit clunky at time, but trust me, you'll be so carried away by the action here that you won't mind. Finally, toward the end it gets a bit into the "cutesy" range that normally kills a book for me, but considering the book as a whole, it's awesome. There is a lot of scientific jargon here, but it's easy to understand once you slow down and read carefully. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know if it's accurate, but I was more interested in the action anyway.

All in all, this is a fun read that raises some serious environmental issues. As noted, it is the author's first novel, and if he keeps writing like this, he will gain a lot of followers. I'd definitely recommend it to people who like science fiction, or to those who read books like Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.