Review by Liesl Cooper -- Containment Breach

[Liesl Cooper]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Containment Breach" by Wm. A. Yandell.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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I chose to read Containment Breach by Wm.A.Yandell as I enjoy Science fiction. The book is set sometime in the future and the story revolves around the lives of a group of Bioengineering Scientists that work on Life-form building and development . The main character is a Level Four Scientist - Walter Smithton. He was an avid follower of the famous scientist Demetrius Zayack, who disappeared over 10 years ago, and has continued his work based on Zayack's experiments and groundbreaking achievements. Smithton has a series of dreams, always about Zayack and in his dreams he is always chasing Zayack but never quite catching him.

Smithton works with three other Level Four scientists, Marcie, Steve and Jack. The Scientists' lives are soon disrupted by the arrival of a Government reader from Space Operations, capable of reading minds. Smithton has an advantage as his family were all readers and he had learnt the art of hiding his real thoughts with a jumble of irrelevant words and thoughts. We are then introduced to Director Bush, he is the Director of World Alliance Intelligence Division and it is evident from the start that he means trouble.

The first glimpse that all is not as it seems is when Smithton's secretary Jan goes missing and then we are introduced to Smithton's mysterious 'creatures'. Before long we are told that there is a greater danger of more 'creatures' in a distant Space Station and the same threat now also exists on earth, and it is up to Smithton and his three colleagues to save the day, and the planet.

While I was initially intrigued by the idea of the book, I found myself constantly frustrated with the level of writing. There was a significant lack of finesse in the vocabulary used throughout the book, and I found myself constantly rewriting sentences in my head, using one or two words that would have explained the meaning of a sentence in a short and concise manner. An example of this would be the following two sentences on page 15 ; 'Quickly I try to put together what I will do now' could be easily replaced with 'I quickly formulate a plan'' and 'Everything slowly starts to begin to move as my mind begins to grasp thought again' could be replaced with 'My mind slowly refocuses and I start to think clearly again' There were also one or two spelling mistakes, an example would be Page 12 'swarmimg' should be replaced with 'swarming' and Page 19, 'Sorry to put you in the lime light' should be 'Sorry to put you in the limelight' At times I was also confused by a sudden change in the direction of the story line, and I had to go back and re read certain sections to keep track of the plot.

Overall I found the book a tedious read, and for that reason I rate this book one star out of four stars and I would be hesitant to recommend it to anyone else. On a positive note I believe that with some editing the writing could be improved and that would make Containment Breach a far more enjoyable read. I believe due to the writing style of this book it would appeal to younger readers with an interest in Science Fiction.

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Containment Breach
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[Erin Painter Baker]

Sounds like great concept, poor execution. That's too bad.

[allbooked+]

I think that occasionally authors rush to get their ideas on paper without thinking too much about how best to do it. Sounds like that is the case here. Think I will have to skip this one!