text: Man, oh man, I think this is one of the worst books I've ever read.  If I could give The Thanatos Syndrome negative stars, I would!
  
  Seriously, half way through, I came to Amazon to see how bad other people thought it was.  Boy was I shocked to see that almost all of these reviews were positive!
  
  I found the book bizarre, unfocused and poorly written.  The volcabulary repeatedly seems misused.  The plot is not reasonable given the safeguards that US funding agencies have in place with regards to human experimentation.  The physics, engineering, psychology, medical chemistry and biology are uninformed and unrealistic.  Characters are introduced as though they will be important to the outcome, only to have them dissipate.  And so on.
  
  The characters don't even seem like real people.  For example, the main character recognizes his cousin by seeing her ankles - and only her ankles - flashing below a curtain, and yet he is apparently unaware of what degree of cousins they are.  How could someone know a person that well, but still only have a vague idea of how they were related by blood?  Or:  one of the more reliable male characters blows duck hunting calls at women he finds attractive - as though he really thinks this will attract them.  C'mon, if the guys a nut (and anyone who tries to seduce women by talking 'duck' to them is nuts!), write him as a nut the whole way through, don't make him the cornerstone of reliability at the book's climax!
  
  The book's title isn't even explained, for crying out loud.  Thanatos means death in Greek, I believe, but I could never understand what the author/editors/audience thought was dying.
  
  I won't read this one again, nor will I look for anything else by Percy Walker. 
  