Dust by Charles Pellegrino Review
by Editor
Dust by Charles Pellegrino
Avon, Mar., 1998.Hardcover, 359 pages.
ISBN: 0380973081.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.
Imagine all the insects are gone. Sound
peaceful? No cockroaches. No mosquito
bites. No ants at your picnic lunch. Dust,
a novel by scientist and
underwater archeaologist Dr. Charles
Pellegrino, shows us what life would be like in
an insect-free
world that arises out of an anomaly of
nature -- and it is hardly a blissful or peaceful
world. Swarms of millions of mites, called
motes, have emerged on the Atlantic coast
and are devouring every living thing in their
path, including humans, down to the bone,
and this is just the start of the problem. Because
the insects have disappeared, the shock to the Earth's
food chain is immense; animals are starving and diseases are
spreading.
The effect on the human race is catastrophic
and Pellegrino graphically illustrates the effects upon life on
the planet Earth as a whole as well as
through the lives of individuals. The main characters
in the book are realistic:
paleobiologist Richard Sinclair who struggles
to find a solution to the apocalypse and Jerry
Sigmond who becomes a Hitleresque leader
of a revolutionary group that attempts to take
control during the turmoil.
Dust is an action-packed adventure full of chaos, scientific thought and discovery with death and destruction on an Armageddon-like scale. An exciting scientific thriller that places Pelligrino on the same plateau in this genre as Michael Crichton and Richard Preston.
Return to the April 1998 issue of The IWJ.
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