Cold Storage

Cold Storage is The Andromeda Strain on crack: chilling end-of-the-world terror infected with wicked humour. Koepp pulls it off with style. When the real apocalypse arrives, may it be even half as funny as this.

See Review on Amazon and Goodreads!

Excellent and really creepy horror thriller!

A Must Read for Horror Lovers!!

Although otherwise well-written, Cold Storage illustrates the perils of writing about a subject about which the author knows nothing, and not bothering to do any research beyond Wikipedia. It was obvious that the author is a screenwriter and not a novelist, because he made the same mistakes that Hollywood does. Yet, it was fun to read, despite the mistakes.

Cold Storage is a techno-thriller (a combination of science fiction, action, and horror), very much in the same vein as The Andromeda Strain. In fact, its plot is suspiciously similar to The Andromeda Strain. Both novels begin with a satellite or space station that was contaminated with an alien or mutant microorganism and then fell to earth. In both books, after the satellite falls to earth, Air Force officers were sent to retrieve the downed satellite. In both novels, the Air Force officers sent to retrieve it find everyone in the small town have died suddenly and mysteriously, and in both novels, they seem to have gone crazy before they died. In both books, the alien microorganism, if allowed to spread, could wipe out all human life, an extinction-level event. In The Andromeda Strain, the alien microbe was bacteria, while in Cold Storage, the alien or mutant microbe was a fast-growing fungus.

First, the good points. The novel is fast-paced, full of action, and was so exciting I couldn’t put it down. It also has colorful characters, with at least a half-dozen viewpoint characters (not including the fungus itself, which became a “viewpoint character” at times – more on that absurdity later).

The first two-thirds of the book was so exciting that I couldn’t put it down! Sure, there was a lot of head-hopping (constantly changing the viewpoint character from paragraph to paragraph), which was sometimes annoying, but it wasn’t confusing, so I could live with that. Sure, even early on, I had some nagging doubts about the believability of the science – the fungus seemed to be highly intelligent, with a will of its own, an extremely rapid ability to adapt, and an uncanny ability to project thoughts into the minds of its human and animal hosts, controlling the minds of people and animals – but I’m not a microbiologist or fungus-ologist (to coin a phrase), so for the first two-thirds of the novel, I just shrugged at the scientific techno-babble and enjoyed the thrilling action.

However, in about the last third of the book, the plot turned more and more implausible, and my suspension of belief became increasingly challenged, until it was impossible to ignore repeated thoughts of “No way; that’s impossible!” It started with the zombie cat and zombie deer that was capable of riding elevators. I am not exaggerating when I call them zombies – that’s what they were. First, there was a cat with a bullet completely through its head, in one side and out the other, blowing its head in half and destroying its brain. After its death, the fungus found it, somehow reanimated it, repaired the damage to its brain, and inserted thoughts into its head, giving it a mission to climb a tree. The cat, I was almost able to shrug off by saying, “Well, after all, cats are supposed to have nine lives, and cats can climb trees, so I can accept that.” But then came the zombie deer, a twice-killed deer that came back to life and rode an elevator up and down….

From this point on, the novel’s believability only got worse. The fungus became a character of its own, with sections and chapters devoted to the “point of view” of the fungus. The fungus was given not only goals and aspirations, but also feelings, emotions, memories, desires, and complex thoughts. If the fungus were purely alien, that might be somewhat believable, but unlike The Andromeda Strain, the fungus in Cold Storage wasn’t exactly alien in origin, but merely an earth fungus that had been mutated by the environment of space.

However, the most unbelievable parts of the novel, where the author’s lack of research showed, and the most unforgivable mistakes (because any halfway-competent editor should have caught the mistakes before publication) involved guns. This author, David Koepp, now tops my list of authors making laughably ridiculous mistakes with weapons.

The main protagonist of Cold Storage is an Air Force officer in a Special Operations unit who’s supposedly highly familiar with every type of weapon, up to and including “suitcase nukes”. It was bad enough that this protagonist called the gun’s grip a “handle” and called magazines “clips”, mistakes that nobody with even the most basic knowledge of guns would make. I started marking errata (errors) on page 275 (out of 372) of the mass-market paperback version, or 74% of the way to the end.

Page 275 demonstrates a complete disregard for the basic laws of physics. It has a little old lady firing a pistol at a man who is running at the protagonists, “coming at them hard and fast.” David Koepp wrote that the “slugs” [sic] from the handgun “slammed into Mike’s chest with such force that they reversed his course of motion. They lifted him off his feet, blew him back two yards in the air, and dropped him to the cement floor, dead.” You don’t even have to know anything about guns to know how absurd this is – you only have to have taken a high school science class to know Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” (see https://www.livescience.com/46561-newton-third-law.html). This means any force that could act on a grown man enough to have “reversed his course of motion… lifted him off his feet, blew him back two yards in the air,” would have also lifted the old lady off her feet, blown her back four yards in the air, and dropped her to the cement floor, dead. Also, if you knew anything at all about guns, you’d know that there is no gun that can reverse someone’s course of motion and blow them back two yards in the air. Not only is there no handgun that can do that, but there’s also no rifle and no shotgun that can do that (despite what you see in Hollywood movies). I can only conclude that David Koepp got his knowledge of guns from watching Hollywood movies, but I’ve got news for you: Hollywood gets everything wrong about guns, everything.

But the error that made my jaw drop, made me re-read the page repeatedly because I couldn’t believe what I’d just read, and had me scratching my head trying to figure out how the hell anyone could make such an absurd, ridiculous, ludicrous mistake was on page 313 of the mass-market paperback. For those who don’t know anything about guns, the mistake on page 313 was equivalent to having a Harvard professor protagonist claim that Harvard has no law school, or a Jeep salesman claim that Jeeps don’t have four-wheel-drive, or a Princeton professor claim that Princeton isn’t in the Ivy League, or a protagonist who works at the Vatican say that the Pope is a Southern Baptist, or a protagonist living in Manhattan claiming New York City doesn’t have a subway system! The mistake was that obvious to the 300 million Americans who, unlike David Koepp, have any familiarity with guns (not only the over 100 million Americans who own guns, but also obvious to anyone who has ever shot a gun, handled a gun, considered buying a gun, or even known anyone else who owns a gun).

On page 313 of the paperback, the protagonist who’s an Air Force Spec Ops guy (and supposedly a gun expert) not only makes a ridiculous mistake, but does so in excruciating detail: “Roberto took a Glock 19 from an open case, loaded it, and turned it around, offering it to Naomi handle [sic] first… ‘You’ve got a twelve-shot [sic] magazine, a trigger safety here, and a thumb lock [sic] over there. You need to flip both of them [sic] to pull the trigger. Once you’ve pulled, each shot requires another pull, but the safeties won’t re-engage unless you take your finger off the trigger.’”

The gun is the best-selling pistol in America, the Glock 19 (so tens of millions of Americans instantly notice the mistake). Everyone knows –except author David Koepp and his editors, apparently – Glocks don’t have any manual safeties! There are no models of Glocks that have manual safeties. For the USAF Special Ops protagonist to claim that a Glock has not one but two manual safeties, and that “You need to flip both of them to pull the trigger” is the most ridiculous gun mistake I’ve ever seen in a book, and I’ve seen some doozies! Not only do Glocks have no safeties, but there are also no handguns from any manufacturer that have two safeties that you have to “flip” off. Then to further write that the safeties will “re-engage” as soon as “you take your finger off the trigger” is beyond ludicrous, because there is no handgun in which a manual safety will “re-engage” as soon as “you take your finger off the trigger.” It would be total idiocy to design any gun with safeties that would “re-engage” as soon as “you take your finger off the trigger,” and again, Glocks have no manual safeties at all. Everyone knows that. The Glock 19 was the best-selling pistol in America in 2020, and everyone knows Glocks have no manual safeties – everyone except author David Koepp and his incompetent editors! With tens of millions of Americans owning Glocks, you’d think the author could have just talked to one of the tens of millions of Americans who own one, rather than just making up fake, nonexistent safeties.

The moral of this book review is a lesson to writers: when you have a protagonist who is an Air Force Special Ops guy, you must know what you’re writing about, so you have to do just a teensy-weensy amount of research, something beyond reading Wikipedia articles that you don’t understand or watching Hollywood movies that get all the facts wrong. Now I see that David Koepp is a screenwriter, not a novelist, and that explains a lot – it explains why he seems to get his gun “facts” from Hollywood movies.

Really poor storyline

This book is about a possible release of a fungus that could destroy the world, so there is suspense and action in trying to halt the fungus, but it’s also got interesting characters and lots of humor. I really enjoyed this book.

Purchased this due the recommendation from Stephen King on the cover and something that doesn’t always mean what your reading will be good.

I also knew that the author David Koepp was a screen writer, that he worked on the Jurassic Park movies, and meany others. So based on that movie series, figured it had to be good, even as ‘Cold Storage’ was his debut novel and ended up liking this one.

One thing that makes this one standout is that the author, has a character whom could have played a role in telling the story but ends up being killed and the vivid detail with what they are investigating to eradicate and makes you wonder.

Could our government have a similar sample stored away some where. That’s a ticking time bomb slowly multiple, expanding some where underground, in a building or military physicality?

Kind of reminded me a little bit of Dean Koontz, as far as Robert, Niaomi and Travis surviving, yet others are killed in a gruesome, terrifying way, found it fast paced, has an add romance added in it which works, pulse pounding, intense, then a few twist and turns.

At first I thought wait, Robert’s 68 years old, then I thought of how active my Mom was at that age and realized after finishing ‘Cold Storage’. That the author kept it realistic as too what he does, adds a twist to it and just wished that they’d pulled over. Then the three watched the explosion verse the way he wrote it and made the ending pages flow better. Definitely will keep reading the author David Koepp and recommended this one, it’s quite good.

Be it a twitter book recommendation or a cover blurb on a book, Stephen King never disappoints.

Made it about 100 pages. This book should be kept in cold storage. “Andromeda Strain” and “Station 11” lite. Move along, nothing to see here.

Just discovered this author and was pleasantly entertained by the original characters and storyline.

Not for me due to style of writing.
Yikes, I did not like this one at all. DNF. I rarely give one star, I’m hesitant to because I know what it feels like (being an author). This book sounded like something I’d enjoy, and I purchased the hardcover. Now this may just me my taste because I am an author. I’m a big proponent of the Fictive Dream, it’s mandatory for the books I read. Cold Storage is written in omniscient point of view while utilizing (at times) the reminiscent voice as well (Ten years later they wouldn’t…). And this omniscient voice also head-jumps, sometime three characters on one page. There is no chance at all for a fictive dream. What this felt like to me was a screenplay with a detailed treatment cut up and interjected when needed.

I’m not a big reader but I really liked this book. Finished it quickly.