Fragment, by Warren Fahy

This book is ridiculously bad.  It appears to have been published by a major New York publishing house (Delacorte Press which is part of Random House) and it's by a first-time author, so I'll analyze is according to Brooks' six elements of fiction as I did with Calumet City.

Concept:  What if a new island was discovered which had completely different animals?  What if the animals were more vicious than the others in the world and threatened to take over the planet if they escaped?  The only thing this book has going for it is its high concept.  Unfortunately, Fahy makes it completely unbelievable, which is the danger of a very high concept.  But it can be done, such as with Crichton's Jurassic Park.  Fahy doesn't even come close to making his concept plausible.

Theme:  Fahy goes on about protecting the planet from humans or other intelligent beings (typical environmentalist ideas), but the book didn't really demonstrate this theme with the plot.  The plot did demonstrate free will vs. determinism, but that's such an obvious choice that this theme didn't really add to the book.

Structure:  This was terribly done and it shows that Fahy knows nothing about dramatic tension.  The main characters don't have a big choice to make until about 80% of the way through the novel.  But even when this moment comes, Fahy doesn't build the tension or develop the conflict.  About half of the book reads like Wikipedia and appears to have been included so we can all appreciate how smart Fahy is about biology.  Another third is pointless action, most of which are characters being chased by vicious island creatures with no tension because we don't care about the characters.

Character:  Even worse than the structure is the characterization and dialogue.  The characters are worse than stereotypes because they are so juvenile.  Here is perhaps the most laughable dialogue in the book:

"I wish you were my girlfriend, Nell," Andy blurted.  Now it was Nell who was blushing.  "Thanks, sweetie."  She tousled his hair.  "But I'm nobody's girlfriend." 

These aren't fifth graders talking, they are grown adults in their late twenties!  Then there are countless action scenes where characters just say "Wow!," "Look at that!," and "I can't believe what I'm seeing!" to make us think it's exciting.  Needless to say, it doesn't work.

Writing Voice:  At least Fahy doesn't try to be fancy with his writing--the writing voice is pedestrian at best.

Scene Construction:  Many of the scenes are pointless and don't move the story forward.  But since there's no structure, the scenes can't really have a mission, can they?

Once again, this book is ridiculously bad.  Surprisingly, it was published by a major New York publisher in hard cover, then as a paperback.  It has also been optioned as a movie.  Did all this come from an interesting concept that they thought they could market by comparing it to Jurassic Park?