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Dr. Noah Haldane #1
Pandemia
Genesis of a Plague
Right now, in a remote corner of rural China, a farmer and his family are sharing their water supply with their livestock: chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep. They share the same waste-disposal system, too.
Bird viruses meet their human counterparts in the bloodstreams of the swine, where they mix and mutate before spreading back into the human population. And a new flu is born....
Dr. Noah Haldane, of the World Health Organization, knows that humanity is overdue for a new killer flu, like the great influenza pandemic of 1919 that killed more than twenty million people in less than four months. So when a mysterious new strain of flu is reported in the Gansu Province of mainland China, WHO immediately sends a team to investigate.
Haldane and his colleagues soon discover that the new disease, dubbed Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome, is far more deadly than SARS, killing one in four victims, regardless of their age or health. But even as WHO struggles to contain the outbreak, ARCS is already spreading to Hong Kong, London, and even America.
In an age when every single person in the world is connected by three commercial flights or fewer, a killer bug can travel much faster than the flu of 1919.
Especially when someone is spreading the virus on purpose...
Right now, in a remote corner of rural China, a farmer and his family are sharing their water supply with their livestock: chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep. They share the same waste-disposal system, too.
Bird viruses meet their human counterparts in the bloodstreams of the swine, where they mix and mutate before spreading back into the human population. And a new flu is born....
Dr. Noah Haldane, of the World Health Organization, knows that humanity is overdue for a new killer flu, like the great influenza pandemic of 1919 that killed more than twenty million people in less than four months. So when a mysterious new strain of flu is reported in the Gansu Province of mainland China, WHO immediately sends a team to investigate.
Haldane and his colleagues soon discover that the new disease, dubbed Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome, is far more deadly than SARS, killing one in four victims, regardless of their age or health. But even as WHO struggles to contain the outbreak, ARCS is already spreading to Hong Kong, London, and even America.
In an age when every single person in the world is connected by three commercial flights or fewer, a killer bug can travel much faster than the flu of 1919.
Especially when someone is spreading the virus on purpose...
415 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2005
83 people are currently reading
2661 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Kalla
19 books561 followersBorn, raised, and still residing in Vancouver, Daniel has worked as an ER Physician for the past twenty years. He is also the author of fifteen published novels, which have been translated into thirteen languages.
In his latest novel, THE DEEPEST FAKE, a tech CEO and AI pioneer’s carefully curated life is unraveling—his wife is cheating, someone is defrauding his company, and he’s just been handed a fatal diagnosis. He’d end it all, if only he could trust his own reality. As deepfakes and deception blur the lines between truth and illusion, the novel explores the challenges and pitfalls of safeguarding reality in an age when it can be fabricated.
Daniel received his B.Sc. and MD from the University of British Columbia, where he is now a clinical associate professor. He is the proud father of two girls and a poorly behaved but lovable mutt, Milo.
In his latest novel, THE DEEPEST FAKE, a tech CEO and AI pioneer’s carefully curated life is unraveling—his wife is cheating, someone is defrauding his company, and he’s just been handed a fatal diagnosis. He’d end it all, if only he could trust his own reality. As deepfakes and deception blur the lines between truth and illusion, the novel explores the challenges and pitfalls of safeguarding reality in an age when it can be fabricated.
Daniel received his B.Sc. and MD from the University of British Columbia, where he is now a clinical associate professor. He is the proud father of two girls and a poorly behaved but lovable mutt, Milo.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews
June 27, 2023
Have you ever decided to go back and read a favourite author’s backlist?
Daniel Kalla is one of my most favourite authors and locating a copy of his debut book (2005) was difficult, but somehow my mother-in-law pulled through and one of her friends had all three books I was needing. I devoured the first Dr. Noah Haldane novel, Pandemic, and was reminded again why I love this author’s books.
Eerily similar to our recent pandemic’s origins, the genesis of the plague kept me spellbound…and raised some questions I hadn’t considered.
When a mysterious flu is reported in rural China, Dr. Noah Haldane of the World Health Organization is sent to investigate. This new disease is named Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome (far more deadly than SARS) and is quickly spreading, killing one in four victims. With the Director of Counter-Bioterrorism, Dr. Gwen Savard, working alongside him, they begin to wonder if someone is spreading this virus on purpose.
What I love about Kalla’s writing is the flow! It’s like having a conversation with someone and I always feel like time stands still when I pick up one of his books. I’m also fascinated with the facts he shares, this time, it’s about epidemiology, viruses, and biological terrorism. My heart rate increases and I’m glued to the pages. The main character was well developed and readers get a full picture of the stresses in his life, allowing us to identify and become invested in his struggles. This was a perfect mix of people, places, and motives!
As I put the book down, I had a fresher appreciation for (British Columbia’s Health Officer) Dr. Bonnie Henry, (Canadian epidemiologist for WHO) Dr. Bruce Aylward, (Canadian Chief Health Officer) Dr. Theresa Tam, and ALL those who were on the frontlines of our recent pandemic. Thank you.
The author, a Vancouver E.R. doctor, worked through our SARS pandemic, lending authenticity to his story.
Daniel Kalla is one of my most favourite authors and locating a copy of his debut book (2005) was difficult, but somehow my mother-in-law pulled through and one of her friends had all three books I was needing. I devoured the first Dr. Noah Haldane novel, Pandemic, and was reminded again why I love this author’s books.
Eerily similar to our recent pandemic’s origins, the genesis of the plague kept me spellbound…and raised some questions I hadn’t considered.
When a mysterious flu is reported in rural China, Dr. Noah Haldane of the World Health Organization is sent to investigate. This new disease is named Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome (far more deadly than SARS) and is quickly spreading, killing one in four victims. With the Director of Counter-Bioterrorism, Dr. Gwen Savard, working alongside him, they begin to wonder if someone is spreading this virus on purpose.
What I love about Kalla’s writing is the flow! It’s like having a conversation with someone and I always feel like time stands still when I pick up one of his books. I’m also fascinated with the facts he shares, this time, it’s about epidemiology, viruses, and biological terrorism. My heart rate increases and I’m glued to the pages. The main character was well developed and readers get a full picture of the stresses in his life, allowing us to identify and become invested in his struggles. This was a perfect mix of people, places, and motives!
As I put the book down, I had a fresher appreciation for (British Columbia’s Health Officer) Dr. Bonnie Henry, (Canadian epidemiologist for WHO) Dr. Bruce Aylward, (Canadian Chief Health Officer) Dr. Theresa Tam, and ALL those who were on the frontlines of our recent pandemic. Thank you.
The author, a Vancouver E.R. doctor, worked through our SARS pandemic, lending authenticity to his story.
September 5, 2025
Great science, scary scenario, weak thriller!
Daniel Kalla's PANDEMIC is an entertaining, informative and frightening thriller that undoubtedly ought to be taken seriously as an uncomfortably plausible scenario in real-life. But, as a fictional thriller, frankly, it simply isn't innovative enough to make the cut as a first-rate thriller. Good quality, yes, but not with that dynamite rock-em, sock-em, non-stop page-flipping urgency that separates the men from the boys in the thriller section of the library!
The villain of the piece is the ARCS virus (Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome), a disease with the lethal virulence of small pox or Spanish Flu but a contagion that spreads with the speed and ease of the common cold! The one (and I would suggest only) truly innovative twist in the novel is in the opening chapter. Kalla posits an ultra-right wing fundamentalist group of Islamic terrorists that purposely infect themselves, in effect weaponizing the virus and using themselves as carriers! Biological suicide bombers, as it were! The notion of using a dastardly right-wing fundamentalist Islamic jihad confronting a right-wing militarist US government whose simplest solution might be to carpet bomb the Middle East and turn the burning sands into a glassy parking lot is getting to be a decidedly tired plot device.
But - make no mistake - Kalla is a skilled writer who has a marked ability to convey the science behind his plot in an informative, interesting fashion. And the logistical details of the World Health Organization and Atlanta's Centre for Disease Control's rapid and overwhelming response to the release of such a viral pathogen are quite breath-taking and humbling. Hats off to these organizations and kudos to Kalla's ability to tell us their story.
Four stars for the science and the real-world details of the response to a frightening pandemic scenario. Two stars for the thriller. We'll average it out at three stars and call it a story worth taking the time to read!
Paul Weiss
Daniel Kalla's PANDEMIC is an entertaining, informative and frightening thriller that undoubtedly ought to be taken seriously as an uncomfortably plausible scenario in real-life. But, as a fictional thriller, frankly, it simply isn't innovative enough to make the cut as a first-rate thriller. Good quality, yes, but not with that dynamite rock-em, sock-em, non-stop page-flipping urgency that separates the men from the boys in the thriller section of the library!
The villain of the piece is the ARCS virus (Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome), a disease with the lethal virulence of small pox or Spanish Flu but a contagion that spreads with the speed and ease of the common cold! The one (and I would suggest only) truly innovative twist in the novel is in the opening chapter. Kalla posits an ultra-right wing fundamentalist group of Islamic terrorists that purposely infect themselves, in effect weaponizing the virus and using themselves as carriers! Biological suicide bombers, as it were! The notion of using a dastardly right-wing fundamentalist Islamic jihad confronting a right-wing militarist US government whose simplest solution might be to carpet bomb the Middle East and turn the burning sands into a glassy parking lot is getting to be a decidedly tired plot device.
But - make no mistake - Kalla is a skilled writer who has a marked ability to convey the science behind his plot in an informative, interesting fashion. And the logistical details of the World Health Organization and Atlanta's Centre for Disease Control's rapid and overwhelming response to the release of such a viral pathogen are quite breath-taking and humbling. Hats off to these organizations and kudos to Kalla's ability to tell us their story.
Four stars for the science and the real-world details of the response to a frightening pandemic scenario. Two stars for the thriller. We'll average it out at three stars and call it a story worth taking the time to read!
Paul Weiss
December 19, 2011
This is a debut novel from this author. And you can tell it's a debut novel.
The characters: The lead character, Haldane, is mostly believable. I could see him existing and functioning in the real world. Gwen is not quite as believable. She was more of a plot device than a character. She lacked personality. I won't say she was entirely two-dimensional, but she was close. Most of the characters seemed to lack something. They all had a two-dimensional aspect that made it hard to care for them. Think of it this way... In most stories, you grow to care for a character or three. You'd be upset if the author killed them off. You wonder what they'll do in the next book. In Kalla's debut novel, I would say that I really wouldn't care if any of the protagonists died. I would shrug my shoulders and read on to see what plot device he'll introduce next. If you can't make your readers *care* about a character you're writing about, you have not successfully created a personality for them.
The plot: Well, it was moderately plausable. He got most of the information about the American system correct. I'm not sure I would buy some of the twists in his story. The mogel's change of opinion was hard to swallow. As was Gwen's predictions. This could have been thought out better. It made Gwen seem like the cureall plot device and ruined any chance I had of enjoying her character. I think the pandemic itself is very plausable. This could happen. He just could have worked a bit more on making the plot itself more believable.
The writing: Not bad overall. He is a good writer. He just needs to work on a few things first. But this is predictable really. Any debut novel will have these issues. Write and learn. (And Daniel? It's called a "Nor'easter" not a "Northeaster".)
Summary:
It's a good book that's worth reading. I will not re-read it. In fact I already gave the book away. As far as mass market paperbacks go, it's in the upper level of those that I've read. Much better than most mass market stuff out there. It's also interesting to see the story touch the city I live in. Few books focus in Vancouver. ;)
Get the book, read it, pass it along to someone else. I'll be getting some more of Daniel's work to see how he's progressed as a writer. I'll let you know what I think. :)
Cheers, all!
The characters: The lead character, Haldane, is mostly believable. I could see him existing and functioning in the real world. Gwen is not quite as believable. She was more of a plot device than a character. She lacked personality. I won't say she was entirely two-dimensional, but she was close. Most of the characters seemed to lack something. They all had a two-dimensional aspect that made it hard to care for them. Think of it this way... In most stories, you grow to care for a character or three. You'd be upset if the author killed them off. You wonder what they'll do in the next book. In Kalla's debut novel, I would say that I really wouldn't care if any of the protagonists died. I would shrug my shoulders and read on to see what plot device he'll introduce next. If you can't make your readers *care* about a character you're writing about, you have not successfully created a personality for them.
The plot: Well, it was moderately plausable. He got most of the information about the American system correct. I'm not sure I would buy some of the twists in his story. The mogel's change of opinion was hard to swallow. As was Gwen's predictions. This could have been thought out better. It made Gwen seem like the cureall plot device and ruined any chance I had of enjoying her character. I think the pandemic itself is very plausable. This could happen. He just could have worked a bit more on making the plot itself more believable.
The writing: Not bad overall. He is a good writer. He just needs to work on a few things first. But this is predictable really. Any debut novel will have these issues. Write and learn. (And Daniel? It's called a "Nor'easter" not a "Northeaster".)
Summary:
It's a good book that's worth reading. I will not re-read it. In fact I already gave the book away. As far as mass market paperbacks go, it's in the upper level of those that I've read. Much better than most mass market stuff out there. It's also interesting to see the story touch the city I live in. Few books focus in Vancouver. ;)
Get the book, read it, pass it along to someone else. I'll be getting some more of Daniel's work to see how he's progressed as a writer. I'll let you know what I think. :)
Cheers, all!
March 18, 2020
A little dated but a fairly good book.
Not sure why i decided to read it now as ot has been sitting in my kindle for a few years
Funny, no one hoarded any toilet paper.
Not sure why i decided to read it now as ot has been sitting in my kindle for a few years
Funny, no one hoarded any toilet paper.
August 10, 2017
I was pretty impressed by this action packed novel. There were a few annoying moments where the author repeated himself, making me think I was a dummy who needed to be reminded of important facts (thus the 4 star rating). It made me question every coughing human I can across in the real world - including myself! It had kind of the standard themes going on but it kept me glued to the book, staying up late to finish it off.
September 26, 2020
"'The clinical syndrome is worse than SARS,' he said. 'Infected patients develop a sudden severe pneumonia often leading to multi-organ failure and death in a couple of days. Sometimes faster. And it's an ugly death, too. [...]'"
The coronavirus is first found in China, then it spreads all over the world. The virus does extreme damage to lungs of many infected patients. Some patients survive thanks to ventilators. Why am I repeating things about Covid-19 that everybody knows and is tired of? Because the thriller Pandemic was published quite some time ago, in 2005, and does not deal with Covid-19 but with the fictitious coronavirus that causes ARCS, Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome, and is much more deadly than the worst flu.
The author of Pandemic, Daniel Kalla, is an actual MD, and the medical aspects of the novel seem to be portrayed realistically. The story is extremely prophetic and predicts events to happen 15 years in the future (from 2005 to 2020) with incredible accuracy.
Alas, the novel also contains a thriller layer: the virus is used as a weapon by a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. They acquire blood from a dying patient in China. Don't ask me how they get the blood from the patient, read the book. Just a little teaser:
Yet this is not the worst thing about the novel. It is mainly doomed by its "human-interest story," one of the most laughably cliché stories I have ever read. This is a colossal pile of c..p including such "literary devices" as marital problems, the use of sodium pentothal, the "truth serum", "confused" sexuality, coincidences heaped on top of coincidences supported by coincidences, and - most ridiculously - James Bond-style exploits performed not only by medical school professors but also by division directors in Homeland Security Department.
Virtually all characterizations are paper-thin. From the very first pages of the novel it is obvious that the protagonists are literary characters who have nothing in common at all with real people. Absolutely worst is Dr. Duncan MacLeod, a "gangly Scottish virologist" and "emerging pathogen expert", who says "Shite!" virtually every time he speaks, and is always loud and obnoxious.
Five stars for the prophetic setup and plausible medical background of the story. 0 stars for the rest. The average yields
Two-and-a-half stars.
The coronavirus is first found in China, then it spreads all over the world. The virus does extreme damage to lungs of many infected patients. Some patients survive thanks to ventilators. Why am I repeating things about Covid-19 that everybody knows and is tired of? Because the thriller Pandemic was published quite some time ago, in 2005, and does not deal with Covid-19 but with the fictitious coronavirus that causes ARCS, Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome, and is much more deadly than the worst flu.
The author of Pandemic, Daniel Kalla, is an actual MD, and the medical aspects of the novel seem to be portrayed realistically. The story is extremely prophetic and predicts events to happen 15 years in the future (from 2005 to 2020) with incredible accuracy.
Alas, the novel also contains a thriller layer: the virus is used as a weapon by a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. They acquire blood from a dying patient in China. Don't ask me how they get the blood from the patient, read the book. Just a little teaser:
"The gurgling amplified, and drool formed at the open end of the tube. The patient writhed on the bed [...] He coughed in frequent spasms. With each cough, bloody sputum sprayed from the tube's end."The entire terrorist plot is cliché, predictable, and grossly implausible. Grossly, I mean it.
Yet this is not the worst thing about the novel. It is mainly doomed by its "human-interest story," one of the most laughably cliché stories I have ever read. This is a colossal pile of c..p including such "literary devices" as marital problems, the use of sodium pentothal, the "truth serum", "confused" sexuality, coincidences heaped on top of coincidences supported by coincidences, and - most ridiculously - James Bond-style exploits performed not only by medical school professors but also by division directors in Homeland Security Department.
Virtually all characterizations are paper-thin. From the very first pages of the novel it is obvious that the protagonists are literary characters who have nothing in common at all with real people. Absolutely worst is Dr. Duncan MacLeod, a "gangly Scottish virologist" and "emerging pathogen expert", who says "Shite!" virtually every time he speaks, and is always loud and obnoxious.
Five stars for the prophetic setup and plausible medical background of the story. 0 stars for the rest. The average yields
Two-and-a-half stars.
November 7, 2020
This book has been on my Want To Read list for a long time, so I’m glad I finally found it and was able to read it. Unfortunately, I was somewhat let down. Just from the title I thought there was going to be a massive worldwide pandemic. Perhaps this author has never read The Stand. I’ve read that one several times – worldwide devastation, mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together - which is what I was looking for in this story, but that didn’t happen. And I don’t expect perfection in the books I read, and perhaps it’s a Canadian author thing, I don’t know, but it was like Dr. Kalla had never heard of a contraction. There were a lot of “we have,” “I am” and “we are.” Perhaps he needed to produce a specific word count, but I would have written “we’ve, I’m and we’re,” because that’s the way I speak. There was also a line that said “that is all good and well,” which to me was like fingernails on a chalkboard. I would have written, “well, that’s all well and good.” And honestly, it seems like the bad guys in books are always Muslims and that bothers me. But, the most glaring error (?) for me (because I’m an Air Force brat, who’s father was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base for several years) was that he wrote that lead character, Noah Haldane, was taken to Andrews AFB, where he caught a plane to Yemen. When he landed in Yemen, it said he’d never been on a military base before and was surprised at all the activity. Well, hadn’t he just flown in from Andrews? Perhaps Dr. Kalla should have let me proof this book for him. I would have suggested more contractions, a fictional cult for the bioterrorists, let him know Andrews is a military base and that he needs a much more devastating flu, more along the line of Captain Trips. Just sayin.’
April 2, 2020
Δυστυχώς πολύ κατώτερο των προσδοκιών... Αφηγηματικά κουράζει σε πολλά σημεία και επαναλαμβάνεται με έναν ιδιαίτερο πλαστικό τυποποιημένο τρόπο με αποτέλεσμα να μην μπορείς να ταυτιστείς με κανέναν ήρωα της υπόθεσης αλλά ούτε και να καταλάβεις την "ταυτότητα" του συγγραφέα ως προς το ύφος. Παρόλο που δεν υπήρχαν λάθη στην πλοκή, η έλλειψη ανατροπών και αυθεντικότητας κρατούσε μία απόσταση από τον αναγνώστη, η οποία πολλές φορές θα μπορούσε να χαρακτηριστεί ενοχλητική.
February 12, 2009
This novel is a compelling and over the edge thriller, Daniel Kalla has written a real page turner one hard to put down.
The story opens in a remote corner of China; where a new and deadly flu is spreading amongst the population of Gansu Province. WHO immediately sends a team headed by Dr Noah Haldane to investigate. They soon discover that this new virus is far deadlier than SARS and is being spread intentionally with devastating effects...WHO struggles to contain the outbreak but the virus has already spread to Hong Kong, London and America....
The author has injected a frightening dose of reality into this tale of biological terrorism; it is scary to think, could this really happen, how safe are we? Kalla has skilfully interwoven tidbits about epidemiology and viruses into the dialog of a large cast of characters, heightening the tension to this fast paced thriller.
This is one book that will make you think twice about the stranger coughing beside you....
The story opens in a remote corner of China; where a new and deadly flu is spreading amongst the population of Gansu Province. WHO immediately sends a team headed by Dr Noah Haldane to investigate. They soon discover that this new virus is far deadlier than SARS and is being spread intentionally with devastating effects...WHO struggles to contain the outbreak but the virus has already spread to Hong Kong, London and America....
The author has injected a frightening dose of reality into this tale of biological terrorism; it is scary to think, could this really happen, how safe are we? Kalla has skilfully interwoven tidbits about epidemiology and viruses into the dialog of a large cast of characters, heightening the tension to this fast paced thriller.
This is one book that will make you think twice about the stranger coughing beside you....
March 17, 2020
6/10 Δεν έχει ιδιαίτερο στόρι ούτε καμία πρωτότυπη ιδέα , αλλά διαβάζεται ανεμπόδιστα και οι σκηνές δράσης είναι καλογραμμένες.
April 8, 2020
We're fucked
June 16, 2020
Boring as shit just like the covid19 pandemic.
May 25, 2025
The main reason I picked up this book was because I wanted to compare what an author in 2005 thought would happen during a pandemic versus what it was like to live through one. Unfortunately the book didn’t really focus on life as a civilian and more on the people trying to stop a terrorist from spreading the virus.
There were some similarities to the 2020 pandemic but nothing in the book really touched on what it was really like. So, if you are curious like I was, don’t bother. You won’t get what you are expecting.
If you do enjoy medical thrillers about viruses then give it a go. I still wouldn’t rate it very high. I found that my interest waned in the last 100 pages and it was a struggle to finish. I wanted to try another book by this author but I’m afraid of a repeat experience.
There were some similarities to the 2020 pandemic but nothing in the book really touched on what it was really like. So, if you are curious like I was, don’t bother. You won’t get what you are expecting.
If you do enjoy medical thrillers about viruses then give it a go. I still wouldn’t rate it very high. I found that my interest waned in the last 100 pages and it was a struggle to finish. I wanted to try another book by this author but I’m afraid of a repeat experience.
January 22, 2023
Excellent! Truly enjoyed the pace, fear and scientific experience! Thanks to Daniel Kalla a fellow Canadian I'm proud to say. Very, very interesting and informative coming from a doctor 😉 I watched an interview with him on YouTube and learned that he finished this book before the covid pandemic. Wow!
May 1, 2020
A very timely read despite its publishing date in 2005. It did not read like a debut novel and kept up a quick pace throughout. Daniel Kalla is a medical doctor and it shows. Think of Pandemic as a Jack Ryan novel in a medical setting. Amazing!
November 6, 2021
I picked this up mostly, I'll be real, for a laugh. I had just been doing some reading from a 2005 National Geographic article on the Bird Flu panic (which, incidentally, cited the man of the hour himself, Dr. Fauci). It's a really interesting read in retrospect, and if you can get your hands on it, I'd recommend it. Many of the points about how viruses form, mutate, and spread will all be incredibly familiar to anyone living on planet earth since the year of our Lord 2020, but it's still interesting and even a bit eerie to read about the concerns epidemiologists were having even back then about how overdue the world was for another pandemic.
Enter Dr. Daniel Kalla of Canada. I assume he either also read the then contemporary National Geographic story or that 'killer flu' was part of the medical zeitgeist at the time because the backbone of his novel mirrors it all the way down to the ominous 'we're overdue for another pandemic' byline the story opens with.
Much of the medicine in 'Pandemic' (coronavirus, N-95 masks, 'stop the spread,' quarantine, and so on) feels like little Easter eggs to we readers of today, and I delightedly pointed each of them out to my indulgent partner as I read.
Unlike our Covid-19, the 'Killer Flu' of Kalla's pandemic is lethal in 25% of those that catch it (perhaps the reason the people populating Kalla's fictional world more willingly stay at home and help out with contact tracing? Either that or Kalla just had more faith in his fellow man than turned out to be realistic) but much less contagious than 'the 'rona'.
Another key difference is that the pandemic in Kalla's world was intentional. I know there are those 'plandemic' believers out there in our real world who would probably view 'Pandemic' as prophetic or even as non-fiction, but for the sake of this discussion let's try to stay on one plane of reality at a time.
Kalla made a few interesting choices when it came to his own fictional 'plandemic.' First of all it must be noted that while many of our primary characters are Americans, Kalla is Canadian. And in true Canadian fashion there are no punches pulled when it comes to punching down on America by way of cultural appropriation.
Now, when I say cultural appropriation I mean that in a very academic sense. I'm not sure how much time Kalla has spent in the US, but he writes about it like someone who got their knowledge of the country purely through watching action films from the 90s and early 2000s. Or maybe honestly just Independence Day. Now me, personally, I found this to be both refreshing and kind of hilarious. In fact, I'd go so far as to make sections of this required reading in a class on the topic so that Americans could kind of feel how cringy (at the very least) it is to be on the recieving end of cultural appropriation.
For instance, here are a few snippets just to give you a sense:
"Haldane had never before been to an air force base, let alone one which was set to launch a critical military operation, but the sense of purpose was palpable in the air. He welled with patriotism." (p.321)"
And how about another gem while we're here:
"The president leaned back in his leather chair. In his early fifties, he wore a navy suit with an open collared light blue shirt, and he towered half a head above the others at the table. He had thick salt and pepper hair, expressive gray eyes, and a prominent chin. He wasn't classically handsome, but he had a commanding and compassionate countenance. Haldane decided he had a perfectly presidential face for photo-ops." (p.262)
One more just for fun, coming at the end of a scene where our two doctor heroes have been in a bioterrorism meeting with the President and his cabinet and others. They've just found the bad guys' base and then the President says this at the end of their negotiations:
"That leaves us forty-eight hours to catch these sons of bitches," the President said. "I authorize you to use any and all means necessary to do just that." He looked around the faces at the table and then stared directly into the camera. "Am I clear?" (p.268).
Putting it another way, in his Wikipedia article it says that Kalla's interest in writing started after he took a film course. Yeah, I got that. This could easily be a flick from 2007 starring Tom Cruise as the main doctor with Scarlet Johannson as the leading lady.
Which leads nicely into my first gripe with 'Pandemic.' Not the cheesy writing? you may gasp. No. The cheesy writing was great. 10/10; exactly what I wanted from this. My first gripe is that according to Dr. Daniel Kalla the world is made up of two, and only two, groups of people: skinny, stunningly beautiful people, and schlubby fat people. And that's it. I really mean it. About a third of my way through 'Pandemic' this stood out to me so much that I started keeping track and I'm pretty sure that literally the only character in the entire novel who isn't in exactly one camp or the other is this one bureaucrat Haldine and co. meet in NYC who gets to be 'bony.'
My issue with this isn't even the very un-PCness of it all; this was published in 2005, after all. My issue is in just how odd it feels for specifically a doctor to write people this way; you'd think given how closely to the public a doctor works he'd have more of a sense of how diverse humans can be in terms of looks? I dunno. It was weird.
My really big issue with 'Pandemic' was this weird tick wherein every single time our protagonists (all medical professionals, by the way, and written BY A MEDICAL DOCTOR) had to wear face masks because (gasp) they were dealing with a super deadly flu epidemic (the title 'pandemic' is also slightly misleading, but forgivable) they would whinge about it. It was a thing.
Most aggregiously, at one point two of the doctors are UNDER QUARANTINE (at a 5 star hotel) and continuously meet up with each other during that time and then one of their colleagues comes to visit--just on a whim-- and then this happens:
Sometimes you just have to say to yourself: what the fuck.
Kalla. My dude. Why?
The political messaging was pretty unambiguous and kind of slaps the reader in the face, so I don't think it's giving anything away to say I came away from 'Pandemic' with the following understanding:
Kalla does not like American interventionism, and also really wants the reader to understand that were a 'plandemic' to ever occur he would not be surprised if it were done in retaliation for that very interventionalism. BUT, he also wants to make it super, super clear that even though such retaliation would quite possibly come out of the Middle East that it would still be only extremists actually thinking that bioterrorism was a good and justified idea. To that end, we have one of the best characters in the novel, a detective in Cairo who is obsessed with Western detective stories and who also has this very on the nose quirk of constantly reminding everyone who will listen that terrorists make Islam look bad and he and the VAST MAJORITY of Muslims hate them.
Very subtle stuff, clearly. And definitely not a surprise that it wasn't an American who wrote it, particularly in 2005. We Americans can get pretty touchy about being portrayed as the 'bad guys.' And to be fair, America isn't 'the bad guy' in the novel; that's definitely the terrorists, but still, there's something there. A tone if you will. Something something America needs to stop being the world police and also is super oil-hungry and needs to please not drag the rest of the (ahem) 'definitely not questionable in any concievable way' rest of the 'Western World' into their nonsense. Or something like that. Like I said: there's a tone.
To summarize: this is pulp fiction at its finest. Absolutely everything you expect to happen happens. The people you expect to make it out do. There's lots of disaster porn for we degenerate connoisseurs of such ficitonal subject matter (as in: if you like movies like 'World War Z' or 'The Day After Tomorrow' you will like this). And the dialogue. Oh my god, the dialogue. I don't know what happened to Kalla at about the halfway mark of writing this, but it's about at that point that he stops trying to pretend these characters are real people (see the samples above).
If you, like me, want a little bit of catharsis after the fatigue of nearly 2 full years (TWO FULL YEARS) of real-world pandemic, you should read this. It's good schlocky fun.
Enter Dr. Daniel Kalla of Canada. I assume he either also read the then contemporary National Geographic story or that 'killer flu' was part of the medical zeitgeist at the time because the backbone of his novel mirrors it all the way down to the ominous 'we're overdue for another pandemic' byline the story opens with.
Much of the medicine in 'Pandemic' (coronavirus, N-95 masks, 'stop the spread,' quarantine, and so on) feels like little Easter eggs to we readers of today, and I delightedly pointed each of them out to my indulgent partner as I read.
Unlike our Covid-19, the 'Killer Flu' of Kalla's pandemic is lethal in 25% of those that catch it (perhaps the reason the people populating Kalla's fictional world more willingly stay at home and help out with contact tracing? Either that or Kalla just had more faith in his fellow man than turned out to be realistic) but much less contagious than 'the 'rona'.
Another key difference is that the pandemic in Kalla's world was intentional. I know there are those 'plandemic' believers out there in our real world who would probably view 'Pandemic' as prophetic or even as non-fiction, but for the sake of this discussion let's try to stay on one plane of reality at a time.
Kalla made a few interesting choices when it came to his own fictional 'plandemic.' First of all it must be noted that while many of our primary characters are Americans, Kalla is Canadian. And in true Canadian fashion there are no punches pulled when it comes to punching down on America by way of cultural appropriation.
Now, when I say cultural appropriation I mean that in a very academic sense. I'm not sure how much time Kalla has spent in the US, but he writes about it like someone who got their knowledge of the country purely through watching action films from the 90s and early 2000s. Or maybe honestly just Independence Day. Now me, personally, I found this to be both refreshing and kind of hilarious. In fact, I'd go so far as to make sections of this required reading in a class on the topic so that Americans could kind of feel how cringy (at the very least) it is to be on the recieving end of cultural appropriation.
For instance, here are a few snippets just to give you a sense:
"Haldane had never before been to an air force base, let alone one which was set to launch a critical military operation, but the sense of purpose was palpable in the air. He welled with patriotism." (p.321)"
And how about another gem while we're here:
"The president leaned back in his leather chair. In his early fifties, he wore a navy suit with an open collared light blue shirt, and he towered half a head above the others at the table. He had thick salt and pepper hair, expressive gray eyes, and a prominent chin. He wasn't classically handsome, but he had a commanding and compassionate countenance. Haldane decided he had a perfectly presidential face for photo-ops." (p.262)
One more just for fun, coming at the end of a scene where our two doctor heroes have been in a bioterrorism meeting with the President and his cabinet and others. They've just found the bad guys' base and then the President says this at the end of their negotiations:
"That leaves us forty-eight hours to catch these sons of bitches," the President said. "I authorize you to use any and all means necessary to do just that." He looked around the faces at the table and then stared directly into the camera. "Am I clear?" (p.268).
Putting it another way, in his Wikipedia article it says that Kalla's interest in writing started after he took a film course. Yeah, I got that. This could easily be a flick from 2007 starring Tom Cruise as the main doctor with Scarlet Johannson as the leading lady.
Which leads nicely into my first gripe with 'Pandemic.' Not the cheesy writing? you may gasp. No. The cheesy writing was great. 10/10; exactly what I wanted from this. My first gripe is that according to Dr. Daniel Kalla the world is made up of two, and only two, groups of people: skinny, stunningly beautiful people, and schlubby fat people. And that's it. I really mean it. About a third of my way through 'Pandemic' this stood out to me so much that I started keeping track and I'm pretty sure that literally the only character in the entire novel who isn't in exactly one camp or the other is this one bureaucrat Haldine and co. meet in NYC who gets to be 'bony.'
My issue with this isn't even the very un-PCness of it all; this was published in 2005, after all. My issue is in just how odd it feels for specifically a doctor to write people this way; you'd think given how closely to the public a doctor works he'd have more of a sense of how diverse humans can be in terms of looks? I dunno. It was weird.
My really big issue with 'Pandemic' was this weird tick wherein every single time our protagonists (all medical professionals, by the way, and written BY A MEDICAL DOCTOR) had to wear face masks because (gasp) they were dealing with a super deadly flu epidemic (the title 'pandemic' is also slightly misleading, but forgivable) they would whinge about it. It was a thing.
Most aggregiously, at one point two of the doctors are UNDER QUARANTINE (at a 5 star hotel) and continuously meet up with each other during that time and then one of their colleagues comes to visit--just on a whim-- and then this happens:
"Haldane opened the door. Duncan McLeod stood on the other side with a surgical mask covering his scraggly beard. He wasn't gowned. And a baseball cap stood in for the shower cap he was supposed to wear. [...] He sauntered into the room and flopped into the loveseat behind the desk [...] Mcleod pulled off his mask. "Christ, I'm tired of these things. I know you're no risk to me." (p.258-259)
Sometimes you just have to say to yourself: what the fuck.
Kalla. My dude. Why?
The political messaging was pretty unambiguous and kind of slaps the reader in the face, so I don't think it's giving anything away to say I came away from 'Pandemic' with the following understanding:
Kalla does not like American interventionism, and also really wants the reader to understand that were a 'plandemic' to ever occur he would not be surprised if it were done in retaliation for that very interventionalism. BUT, he also wants to make it super, super clear that even though such retaliation would quite possibly come out of the Middle East that it would still be only extremists actually thinking that bioterrorism was a good and justified idea. To that end, we have one of the best characters in the novel, a detective in Cairo who is obsessed with Western detective stories and who also has this very on the nose quirk of constantly reminding everyone who will listen that terrorists make Islam look bad and he and the VAST MAJORITY of Muslims hate them.
Very subtle stuff, clearly. And definitely not a surprise that it wasn't an American who wrote it, particularly in 2005. We Americans can get pretty touchy about being portrayed as the 'bad guys.' And to be fair, America isn't 'the bad guy' in the novel; that's definitely the terrorists, but still, there's something there. A tone if you will. Something something America needs to stop being the world police and also is super oil-hungry and needs to please not drag the rest of the (ahem) 'definitely not questionable in any concievable way' rest of the 'Western World' into their nonsense. Or something like that. Like I said: there's a tone.
To summarize: this is pulp fiction at its finest. Absolutely everything you expect to happen happens. The people you expect to make it out do. There's lots of disaster porn for we degenerate connoisseurs of such ficitonal subject matter (as in: if you like movies like 'World War Z' or 'The Day After Tomorrow' you will like this). And the dialogue. Oh my god, the dialogue. I don't know what happened to Kalla at about the halfway mark of writing this, but it's about at that point that he stops trying to pretend these characters are real people (see the samples above).
If you, like me, want a little bit of catharsis after the fatigue of nearly 2 full years (TWO FULL YEARS) of real-world pandemic, you should read this. It's good schlocky fun.
June 9, 2017
I eventually gave up, a little more than 3/4 of the way through. Long drawn out conversations about technical things. Too much about the personal lives of characters when it really does nothing but stop the story dead in its tracks every time the characters' personal lives are mentioned. Too much backstory for characters that just end up dying. The story actually introduces, names and follows one character for only a few moments of read time before he dies.
The story moves very slowly. People talk about their personal convictions a lot, but there's really no reason for it. Once we understand their motivations, there's no reason for them to keep talking about it, and no need to know the motivations of every minor character.
As for the "pandemic," [Spoiler, kind of....................] so the suspense isn't really there.
With a good editor, this might have been 100 pages shorter and a good book.
The story moves very slowly. People talk about their personal convictions a lot, but there's really no reason for it. Once we understand their motivations, there's no reason for them to keep talking about it, and no need to know the motivations of every minor character.
As for the "pandemic," [Spoiler, kind of....................] so the suspense isn't really there.
With a good editor, this might have been 100 pages shorter and a good book.
July 13, 2009
I did not find the story plausible on a couple important fronts: 1) I could not buy that Gwen predicts the entry method exactly before it happened. 2) I could not buy that Gwen would not call for help when she becomes infected. She could easily call Noah or someone in WHO and say, "Come get me, but do not send an ambulance from a local hospital. We need to take extra care."
I did not find the Scottish doctor funny with his Scottish swearing expressions, and it seemed the author was striving for humor.
This book was a bit interesting since it showed some functional lives behind the World Health Organization (WHO) doors. It showed how the WHO doctors's lives are consumed by running from infection to infection around the world, and how their personal lives are a complete wreck largely due to their careers. I liked how that part of the story rang true. I would bet that happens.
The Chinese governmental coverup and suicide seemed plausible, and I could see that ... from any government.
This is a quick read without a lot substance.
Bill
I did not find the Scottish doctor funny with his Scottish swearing expressions, and it seemed the author was striving for humor.
This book was a bit interesting since it showed some functional lives behind the World Health Organization (WHO) doors. It showed how the WHO doctors's lives are consumed by running from infection to infection around the world, and how their personal lives are a complete wreck largely due to their careers. I liked how that part of the story rang true. I would bet that happens.
The Chinese governmental coverup and suicide seemed plausible, and I could see that ... from any government.
This is a quick read without a lot substance.
Bill
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 31, 2014
In defiance of the ebola scares I have been deliberately reading everything I own about plagues and (aptly named) pandemics. For a first novel, I was highly impressed; it was a little rough around the edges, but a thoroughly fun and enjoyable read. The characters were a little flat, especially the women, and he spent so much time trying not to delve into stereotypes that they became stereotypes.
I will say that I wasn't impressed with the random addition of the , since it was so late in the book that I knew that it wasn't going anywhere. There were lots of different plot threads, some of which didn't go anywhere, but that's all par for the course for the first novel out of the gate. I'll definitely read more of his work, since I know he will only go up from here.
I will say that I wasn't impressed with the random addition of the , since it was so late in the book that I knew that it wasn't going anywhere. There were lots of different plot threads, some of which didn't go anywhere, but that's all par for the course for the first novel out of the gate. I'll definitely read more of his work, since I know he will only go up from here.
July 13, 2023
You wouldn’t think I’d want to read a book about a pandemic, but maybe I’m a masochist because I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Kalla’s 2005 novel aptly titled, Pandemic. Written 15 years before the word “COVID” was a thought in the wider public’s consciousness, Kalla’s book is eerily prescient and timely, albeit the terrorist angle oddly feels quaint now, if still terrifying to consider.
The book follows Dr. Noah Haldane, an emerging pathogens expert working for the World Health Organization, who goes from country to country, continent to continent, investigating the emergence of the world’s deadliest diseases to contain the spread. (I have to say, how neat is it that that’s a job, even if it’s terrifying work, all things considered?) He’s particularly worried, though, about the world being overdue for the another worldwide epidemic like the 1918 Spanish flu, which wiped out millions of people and that was before the ubiquity of air travel. However, what makes the situation even more sinister in Kalla’s capable hands is to consider what would happen if a few Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt, a sort of offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, were to weaponize the flu in an effort to spread it from China to the Western world to “negotiate” America out of Islamic countries. That’s exactly what happens in this book, though. The Islamists infect themselves and then fly to London and Hong Kong and ride elevators in the hotels to spread the disease. Interestingly, the highly violent general of the group isn’t really motivated by being a true believer; rather, he’s motivated by revenge against the Egyptian military elite who passed him up for a promotion. That’s right. He risked and sought millions of deaths and other calamities as a result over a job dispute. But I loved that wrinkle! As dastardly and psychotic as it may be. I also enjoyed that Kalla added an Egyptian detective character, who is not only motivated in opposition to the Islamists for ruining the name and message of Islam, but he actually helps crack the case against them and help the Americans. I was sad when he died, although luckily he died on his own terms and wasn’t tortured to death by the general.
Like, let’s be real: as we saw with COVID, a virus is bad enough! It’s destabilizing and deadly enough. It forces draconian lockdowns in China (remarked upon in the book) and brings American society to a halt, emptying its streets (also remarked upon in the book). And the disease in Kalla’s book is more deadly both in what it does to the body and in the fact that it kills not just healthy, young people, but one in four people who contract it. In other words, most influenza viruses, including COVID, kill far less than 1 percent of the people infected; this one in the book was killing 25 percent of all people infected. If it was more contagious …
Again, what I love about this book is how grounded in reality it is and I know this to be the case because I read it after we experienced our own killer, world-shifting pandemic! Even down to the bureaucrats worrying about telling the public the truth about the virus for fear of causing mass panic, or the ways in which the smallest of human errors can cause calamities, or the ways in which hubris can likewise cause calamities. Ignorance and arrogance (the Chinese, for example, thinking they had contained it) alike are twin fortunes for the proliferation of a virus. That said, the bureaucrats and the WHO largely did well in response to the pandemic, arguably better than our own bureaucrats did.
Naturally, we get some domestic squabbles intermixed throughout the book to add some character heft, primarily through Noah’s disintegrating marriage with his wife (she cheated on him) and him missing his 4-year-old daughter because of his WHO work travel. But also, Noah falls for the U.S. “Bug Czar,” Gwen. It was cute, if expected. The story gets a little dramatic beyond its realistic roots when the bad Egyptian general survives a raid in Somalia by American special forces and brings a more contagious mutation of the virus to the U.S. and somehow, also finds Gwen and kidnaps her. Then, Noah, another WHO member, and a CIA guy, take down the terrorists themselves to rescue her. Don’t get me wrong, I was breathlessly flipping the pages to see what would happen! But it wasn’t as grounded as the rest of the book.
Still, I thought Kalla’s book was really well-done, and it moved at a fast clip because of the way a pandemic unfurls, where it feels far away and remote, trickling into our awareness at first, and then once it’s jumping from person-to-person, country-to-country, and continent-to-continent (and likewise, Noah and the WHO are jumping with it), it feels overwhelming and rapid all at once. The decision-making Noah, Gwen, and the U.S. government went through both in how to track the source of the virus and then how to deal with the terrorist aspect of it, was enthralling, too. And again, realistic! Heck, even the rapid development of a efficacious vaccine occurs as a subplot in this book.
The potential threat of bioterrorism isn’t someone weaponizing some of the boogeymen of diseases because those are too difficult, but in Kalla’s imagining, weaponizing something that is far easier to turn into a lethal weapon and make it contagious: the flu, and we saw as much in the book. Four strategically positioned, infected terrorists killed hundreds across the globe. If more had been able to infect others on a “viral” suicide mission, then who knows what could have happened. It’ll spook you out to consider the ramifications, especially, again, now that we’ve experienced COVID. So, if you’re also a masochist like me, and you want to read an eerily prescient book about how a pandemic might unfurl with some dramatic flourishes, then I recommend Kalla’s well-researched and logical book.
The book follows Dr. Noah Haldane, an emerging pathogens expert working for the World Health Organization, who goes from country to country, continent to continent, investigating the emergence of the world’s deadliest diseases to contain the spread. (I have to say, how neat is it that that’s a job, even if it’s terrifying work, all things considered?) He’s particularly worried, though, about the world being overdue for the another worldwide epidemic like the 1918 Spanish flu, which wiped out millions of people and that was before the ubiquity of air travel. However, what makes the situation even more sinister in Kalla’s capable hands is to consider what would happen if a few Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt, a sort of offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, were to weaponize the flu in an effort to spread it from China to the Western world to “negotiate” America out of Islamic countries. That’s exactly what happens in this book, though. The Islamists infect themselves and then fly to London and Hong Kong and ride elevators in the hotels to spread the disease. Interestingly, the highly violent general of the group isn’t really motivated by being a true believer; rather, he’s motivated by revenge against the Egyptian military elite who passed him up for a promotion. That’s right. He risked and sought millions of deaths and other calamities as a result over a job dispute. But I loved that wrinkle! As dastardly and psychotic as it may be. I also enjoyed that Kalla added an Egyptian detective character, who is not only motivated in opposition to the Islamists for ruining the name and message of Islam, but he actually helps crack the case against them and help the Americans. I was sad when he died, although luckily he died on his own terms and wasn’t tortured to death by the general.
Like, let’s be real: as we saw with COVID, a virus is bad enough! It’s destabilizing and deadly enough. It forces draconian lockdowns in China (remarked upon in the book) and brings American society to a halt, emptying its streets (also remarked upon in the book). And the disease in Kalla’s book is more deadly both in what it does to the body and in the fact that it kills not just healthy, young people, but one in four people who contract it. In other words, most influenza viruses, including COVID, kill far less than 1 percent of the people infected; this one in the book was killing 25 percent of all people infected. If it was more contagious …
Again, what I love about this book is how grounded in reality it is and I know this to be the case because I read it after we experienced our own killer, world-shifting pandemic! Even down to the bureaucrats worrying about telling the public the truth about the virus for fear of causing mass panic, or the ways in which the smallest of human errors can cause calamities, or the ways in which hubris can likewise cause calamities. Ignorance and arrogance (the Chinese, for example, thinking they had contained it) alike are twin fortunes for the proliferation of a virus. That said, the bureaucrats and the WHO largely did well in response to the pandemic, arguably better than our own bureaucrats did.
Naturally, we get some domestic squabbles intermixed throughout the book to add some character heft, primarily through Noah’s disintegrating marriage with his wife (she cheated on him) and him missing his 4-year-old daughter because of his WHO work travel. But also, Noah falls for the U.S. “Bug Czar,” Gwen. It was cute, if expected. The story gets a little dramatic beyond its realistic roots when the bad Egyptian general survives a raid in Somalia by American special forces and brings a more contagious mutation of the virus to the U.S. and somehow, also finds Gwen and kidnaps her. Then, Noah, another WHO member, and a CIA guy, take down the terrorists themselves to rescue her. Don’t get me wrong, I was breathlessly flipping the pages to see what would happen! But it wasn’t as grounded as the rest of the book.
Still, I thought Kalla’s book was really well-done, and it moved at a fast clip because of the way a pandemic unfurls, where it feels far away and remote, trickling into our awareness at first, and then once it’s jumping from person-to-person, country-to-country, and continent-to-continent (and likewise, Noah and the WHO are jumping with it), it feels overwhelming and rapid all at once. The decision-making Noah, Gwen, and the U.S. government went through both in how to track the source of the virus and then how to deal with the terrorist aspect of it, was enthralling, too. And again, realistic! Heck, even the rapid development of a efficacious vaccine occurs as a subplot in this book.
The potential threat of bioterrorism isn’t someone weaponizing some of the boogeymen of diseases because those are too difficult, but in Kalla’s imagining, weaponizing something that is far easier to turn into a lethal weapon and make it contagious: the flu, and we saw as much in the book. Four strategically positioned, infected terrorists killed hundreds across the globe. If more had been able to infect others on a “viral” suicide mission, then who knows what could have happened. It’ll spook you out to consider the ramifications, especially, again, now that we’ve experienced COVID. So, if you’re also a masochist like me, and you want to read an eerily prescient book about how a pandemic might unfurl with some dramatic flourishes, then I recommend Kalla’s well-researched and logical book.
January 4, 2008
Pandemic by Daniel Kalla is a very complex book. I would recommend this book to anyone who has free time. This book talks about a disease that is spreading all over Europe, Asia and Africa. This disease is similar to the flu but it doesn't go away and is more extreame. People should read this book because it is like a movie and it talks about the struggles of people. This book can relate to the world because many people have heard about many people in Africa have AIDS, well this the same but it is far more superior. This book is like a mimicry of the world status around disease. Enjoy!
January 19, 2011
Fairly basic story about bioterrorism. I felt the book had a lot of irrelevant storylines, especially between Haldane and his wife/daughter. The only reason I would admit to them being required is if they got the flu as well. Alas they didn't, so the considerable moaning about his wife having a love affair with the woman next door was even more painful.
There are books out there that cover this theme in a much better way. I wouldn't say don't read it, as it's a very basic read and enjoyable enough, but the cliched plot makes you prone to eye rolling some of the time.
There are books out there that cover this theme in a much better way. I wouldn't say don't read it, as it's a very basic read and enjoyable enough, but the cliched plot makes you prone to eye rolling some of the time.
October 26, 2016
As a first book, awesome, good job.
I think the cover and the reviews make it out to be a wilder book than it is. I personally found it very predictable.
Another review on here mentioned how characters where unintentionally stereotyped and I very much agree with that.
Writing style is smooth and easy to read. Only issue with the style is that it's almost too natural (over discussed details, repeating conversations) that some parts are mundane. Would translate well as a screenplay because of this.
I think the cover and the reviews make it out to be a wilder book than it is. I personally found it very predictable.
Another review on here mentioned how characters where unintentionally stereotyped and I very much agree with that.
Writing style is smooth and easy to read. Only issue with the style is that it's almost too natural (over discussed details, repeating conversations) that some parts are mundane. Would translate well as a screenplay because of this.
October 30, 2011
The author might know a lot about virology, but so do I.
While the author sometimes managed to explain pretty complex aspects of virus strategy very well, he othertimes tried to fool the reader with what a virus expert might know and say. I did not like that second part.
Also, he can't write about people, dialogue or romance for a penny's worth. It's really really bad.
Hopefully he got better after this 2005 debut, but I'm not sure I am prepared to find out after this debacle.
While the author sometimes managed to explain pretty complex aspects of virus strategy very well, he othertimes tried to fool the reader with what a virus expert might know and say. I did not like that second part.
Also, he can't write about people, dialogue or romance for a penny's worth. It's really really bad.
Hopefully he got better after this 2005 debut, but I'm not sure I am prepared to find out after this debacle.
May 26, 2013
I really wanted to like this book. It had a promising plot, interesting sounding characters, and a doctor as an author to assure accuracy. But . . . the book never really seemed to get started. I kept waiting for the plot to get interesting, but it never really did. It just didn't keep you interested, and since it took me MONTHS to finish it, not a good sign.
October 8, 2010
Super possible plot in the future of biowarfare that we may be facing some day down the line. Kind of the stereotypical terrorist figures. Also switches points of view frequently which is a plus to keep the story interesting. A relatively quick read.
September 11, 2015
It is so sad when the best part of the book after 71 pages is the prolog! I have put it down to boring, even my daughter said " WOW, five pages of background history on a doctor that is not the main character!"
August 18, 2024
I thought long and hard about why this book just didn't quite work for me, and came to the conclusion that certain things about this story just lent an air of inferiority compared to the next novel in the series (Cold Plague), which I incidentally had read first (so my fault entirely).
If I had to talk about the positive aspects, the thing that I enjoyed most about the book was the medical premise and the scary propagation of the pandemic via bioterrorism, which underscored the "thriller" aspect of the novel. The first chapter in particular, as the prologue and set-up of the entire outbreak, was particularly chilling. The chapters dealing with the spread of the virus from city to city were also the most interesting to read, and painted quite the horrific and rather believable picture of how rapidly viruses can spread, which hits home even more strongly 3-plus years later after the COVID pandemic broke out.
Beyond that however, the story got bogged down by numerous factors including flat, 2D characters, intermittent military descriptions, political developments, and other aspects. I found the main characters rather bland and generic, and smacking strongly of James Bond-type tropes. Noah Haldane, for example, just happens to be this leading virus expert hotshot who incidentally is handsome, the perfect father, the not-so-perfect husband (which just comes across as not really being his fault anyway), and who happens to be a good shot and savior of damsels in distress? Rather boring in my opinion. The romance between him and Gwen was also incredibly flat and did absolutely nothing to elevate the story; in fact, it would have been better if left entirely out.
Character descriptions were also random and seemed rather insulting and quite stereotypical at times. Kalla apparently decided to chose the most punchy adjectives to describe his secondary characters, with liberal use of words like fat, moderately obese, bony, and other not-so-flattering descriptions. His heroes and heroines however, are portrayed in much more appealing light (gorgeous eyes, size 4, long legs, etc). Definitely some favoritism there.
Aside from this, one thing that irritated me most was the fact that anytime Kalla introduced a remotely interesting character that appeared to have much more skin in the game, he decided to kill said character off, leaving an entirely bland character cast in place. Seriously Kalla, you had some pretty great characters to work with, and decided that for the sake of elevating Haldane, Gwen and some other superficial character to the position of hero (because I guess there can only be one?), everyone else had to perish? Meh.
Cold Plague was a more interesting and better constructed story in my opinion. However, if I really wish to get my fix for sci-fi thriller, I'll turn to Michael Crichton's tried and tested Jurassic Park, which follows a much better formula.
If I had to talk about the positive aspects, the thing that I enjoyed most about the book was the medical premise and the scary propagation of the pandemic via bioterrorism, which underscored the "thriller" aspect of the novel. The first chapter in particular, as the prologue and set-up of the entire outbreak, was particularly chilling. The chapters dealing with the spread of the virus from city to city were also the most interesting to read, and painted quite the horrific and rather believable picture of how rapidly viruses can spread, which hits home even more strongly 3-plus years later after the COVID pandemic broke out.
Beyond that however, the story got bogged down by numerous factors including flat, 2D characters, intermittent military descriptions, political developments, and other aspects. I found the main characters rather bland and generic, and smacking strongly of James Bond-type tropes. Noah Haldane, for example, just happens to be this leading virus expert hotshot who incidentally is handsome, the perfect father, the not-so-perfect husband (which just comes across as not really being his fault anyway), and who happens to be a good shot and savior of damsels in distress? Rather boring in my opinion. The romance between him and Gwen was also incredibly flat and did absolutely nothing to elevate the story; in fact, it would have been better if left entirely out.
Character descriptions were also random and seemed rather insulting and quite stereotypical at times. Kalla apparently decided to chose the most punchy adjectives to describe his secondary characters, with liberal use of words like fat, moderately obese, bony, and other not-so-flattering descriptions. His heroes and heroines however, are portrayed in much more appealing light (gorgeous eyes, size 4, long legs, etc). Definitely some favoritism there.
Aside from this, one thing that irritated me most was the fact that anytime Kalla introduced a remotely interesting character that appeared to have much more skin in the game, he decided to kill said character off, leaving an entirely bland character cast in place. Seriously Kalla, you had some pretty great characters to work with, and decided that for the sake of elevating Haldane, Gwen and some other superficial character to the position of hero (because I guess there can only be one?), everyone else had to perish? Meh.
Cold Plague was a more interesting and better constructed story in my opinion. However, if I really wish to get my fix for sci-fi thriller, I'll turn to Michael Crichton's tried and tested Jurassic Park, which follows a much better formula.
October 17, 2020
I wanted to like this book. I love epidemiology, so I was really excited to read this. I LOVE LOVE LOVE books by Richard Preston and I was hoping this author would be my new Richard Preston. Not only that, the author is based in Vancouver, where I also live, and the main character is in Washington DC area, where I used to live. It started out good, but there was not that much science or epidemiology in this story. I think half of the book was about the main character's love life, which didn't interest me. The main character, Noah Haldane, isn't likeable, especially how he evaluates every woman he meets based on their looks, and it is always thin, tall, Caucasian women that we are supposed to like. Unfortunately, there isn't any character likeable enough to get emotionally engaged in this story (I probably liked an Egyptian cop the most, but he's barely in it). There is a little bit of science and a little bit of terrorism-related action, but neither is in-depth enough to be engaging. Also, as I read this in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, some of the reactions by epidemiologists regarding the pandemic was silly. They find five days of quarantine in a 5-star hotel suit with room service unbearable, and NONE of the scientists can stand wearing a mask! It's a little shocking to be honest knowing that the book was written by a doctor. But I think the issue may be that the book is old. I believe it was published around 2005? I hope that his newer books would be scientifically stronger and less stereotypical with the characters.
September 30, 2017
In Daniel Kalla's Pandemic, this thriller debut packs a bunch with a cross of a medical thriller and a military thriller combined in real life true topics in today's world. Dr. Noah Haldane was a doctor for the World Health Organization and travels the world, when there's a major epidemic health concern. While he dealt with his wife's affair and confused sexuality, he also wanted to be there for his young daughter Chloe. At the news of an outbreak in the Gansu province of China, he joins the other WHO doctors to deal with this major outbreak and contain it. After they had taken care of business, it wasn't the end of it. Hazzam Kizzir and Abdul Sabri have plans to spread this virus worldwide in an act of war, while Cairo Police Chief Achmed Eleish was on the hunt for Kizzir. When word had spread it had arrived in London, the world stood still and prepared for the worst. From there, that's when Noah met Dr. Gwen Savard who worked for the Department of Bioterrorism and joined forces to deal with this bad viral outbreak. In an instant, there's a chemical attraction between them, even after they've been quarantined for a few days. When they thought the worst would be over, it had spread to Asia, Canada and even the USA. That's when they come up with a plan to stop the bioterrorists and make a viable medicine to cure all before it's too late. In the end, it's a shocking ending to fight for their country, even if their lives depended on it.
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