A brilliantly quirky read. I was funny yet thrilling, and ridiculously entertaining. Finished in one sitting - 5 stars!!!

Like x files meets vandermeer with blockbuster credentials, this was nuts but i thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it did seem things were wildly convenient at points. The chapters from the pov of a sporous being really amused me!

Not normally my type of novel BUT I devoured every page. What a smart premise. The 'villain' isn't human yet the deadly organism is hellbent on destroying everything that comes in its path (and seeks it out too - eek). This is an entirely believable well plotted thriller. Scarily one can imagine such an outbreak occurring today. Perfect for geeks and thriller fans. Looking forward to reading more by this author.

This was a great fast paced, life or death (with plenty of the latter), humourous and human romp.

I really liked the friendship that Teacake and Naomi developed over the course of the book, it never felt forced or too fast. Teacake was instantly likeable despite his somewhat checkered past and Naomi complemented him well.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a screen writer, I felt like I could visualise the whole novel happening in front of me as I read it. Koepp’s style was easy to engage with and bought the story fully to life.

All the characterisation in this book felt well written, there were no two dimensional characters here. In fact by one criticism of the authors style is that at times the Cordyceps fungus felt a little too anthropomorphised to me, assigned thoughts that I’m pretty sure a fungus can’t have (but then again this is Science Fiction so maybe it can!)

This didn’t detract from the story though, in fact if anything it made it more accessible. There are obvious comparisons to be drawn here with The Girl With All the Gifts by M R Carey, who also used the Cordyceps fungus to great effect in his work.

Spoilers for The Girl With all the Gifts follow

Whereas M R Careys Cordyceps variation fully created zombies of its victims for quite some time before they ‘fruited’, David Koepp chose to have his Cordyceps variation kill its victims in fast and gruesome explosions. With Careys story we see the world after the fungus has (mostly) won it’s battle, Koepp’s is at the beginning of its mutation and focused on the efforts to stop the spread.

I enjoyed both stories and would recommend both to anyone who enjoys dystopian science fiction but I think on balance Carey’s Cordyceps variation felt more realistic to me. Perhaps because of the aforementioned anthropomorphism that Koepp gave his.

All in all, a romping good read.

Ever scared of going to the fridge, well you might think differently after reading this and might not look at mushrooms the same way again. After investigating a suspected bio-terror incident Roberto Diaz recovers a fungus which is stored in cold storage underground for eternity, or is it. I initially thought this story was going to be an endless series of lengthy character bios but once the essentials were in place the book went into top gear to the end. The author, like with Jurassic Park plays with the "what if" this time not extracting DNA from insects trapped in amber but a fungus sample from a Sky Lab experiment that returns home. It is this linking that provides the credibility needed to make it exciting and thrilling.

When a super infectious strain of virus is let loose from its containment facility it could spell the end of the world as we know it. Can it be stopped before it’s too late?

Cold Storage is written by David Koepp, a screenwriter and director who has worked on some impressive titles including Jurassic Park, Spider Man and Mission Impossible. It’s a high standard to be spelled out on the opening pages of the book and I’m not sure it was perhaps a good idea to set expectations so high so soon in. On the one hand, the book feels very visual and cinematic, it jumps about from character to character and is quite dramatic, you can almost hear ‘and the camera pans to…’. I loved how the spread of the virus was depicted and the dread you felt from characters making poor decisions.

However, the scope of the book was a lot smaller than I was expecting. You can sum the entire plot up in a sentence and I didn’t feel there were any good twists or interesting moments to keep you invested. It felt quite predictable at times - a very standard virus apocalyptic-style thriller which is a very over saturated market at the moment (and I’ve certainly read a lot better!) Even the characters didn’t really enthral or capture my attention. The whole thing also felt very unrealistic and I didn’t really understand how sometimes the virus could be capable of ‘crawling’ towards people at super fast speed, almost like a creature and other times a main character would get right up close to it and be fine. It also seemed to be airborne sometimes but not always – whichever was most suitable for the plot!

Many reviews and blurb snippets have mentioned the comedic elements but I must admit it didn’t make me laugh at all. I also didn’t really enjoy the romance side-plot and felt the ending was far too cliché and neat for me. I would have perhaps liked a proper movie ‘dun dun duuuun’ twist moment at the end and was a little disappointed there wasn’t one!

Overall Cold Storage comes from a high pedigree but felt like a distinctly average take on an over saturated genre that had nothing new to add to the table. Thank you to NetGalley & HQ Stories for a chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the debut novel from the screenwriter of Jurassic Park aka my favourite film aka officially the best film ever. Obviously, I had to read it.

Cold Storage begins in the Australian outback in 1987 where specialist bioterror operative Roberto Diaz has been sent to investigate a suspected chemical attack. On arrival it turns out to be something quite different: a deadly mutating organism posing an extinction level threat to the world. No biggie. It gets cleared up and stuck in a secret US government storage facility hundreds of feet underground. What could possibly go wrong?

Cut to 2019 and that storage facility is no longer in the hands of the government and instead open to the public to store their junk. Single mum Naomi and ex-con Teacake are working security overnight when the deadly organism wakes up and they become embroiled in a race against time to stop it.

Cold Storage was a really fun read with just the right amount of science fiction. Instead, the plot is driven along by action and some truly shocking gross out moments. This might not be the ideal read for cat lovers.

Unsurprisingly given the author, the book has a cinematic quality to it. There are lots of very tense set pieces and some fairly corny dialogue which feels as though it is intended to become quotable at a later date on the big screen.

If you are looking for deep character development or complex scientific analysis, then Cold Storage may not be for you but if, like me, you sometimes just want a moment of easy and entertaining escapism then it is perfect.

I fell in love with this book from the outset, it’s bit horror-ish, bit fantasy with some humor thrown in and just appealed to me. We start off going to a desert in Australia with agents that have not seen anything like this before and they decide to bury it in cold storage beneath a little used military repository. Some 15 odd years later something goes wrong, very wrong!

Lt Colonel Trini Romano and Major Roberto Diaz get sent on a mission with Dr. Hero Martins, a Microbiologist from University of Chicago. She specialises in epidemiological surveillance. They were going to a remote township called Kiwirrkurra in the middle of the Gibson Desert. In 1979, part of the skylab fell outside Esperance. Three days ago, a call came from NASA Space Biosciences Research Branch. A message had come through about six different agencies, that someone was calling from West Australia to say ‘something was coming out of the tank’. ‘There was an extra oxygen tank. This fell on Kiwirrkurra. The caller identified themselves as Enos Namatjira. His uncle had found it five or six years ago and moved it in front of his house, he kept it as a souvenir. But now there was something wrong with it, and he was getting sick. Quickly.’ ‘Since then people have started dying.’

Sixteen years later in 2003, the DTRA decided the mine complex was a Cold War complex that was no longer needed so it was cleared out, cleaned up, given a coat of paint and sold to Smart Warehousing for private use. The self storage company put up some drywall, got 650 locking overhead garage doors and opened it to the public. Teacake managed to get a job working at the storage facility and got nights, Thursday through Sunday. He always tried to get there a bit early at the start of a shift. When he first started a shift, he checked the twelve monitors, to see if anyone was in and what state the place was in. Then a quick glance at the other entrance to see if she had turned up for work, she had, then to work out a way to bump into her. She, Naomi, was on the move with a full bin under her arm. She was heading to the dumpsters. Thanks to Griffin, Teacake had a full bin so he had an excuse to bump into her, so off he went. Naomi had just emptied her bin when Teacake burst into the loading bay, making her jump. They introduced themselves as they hadn’t met before and chatted before Naomi turned to leave before she mentioned that there was a ‘beep’ coming from Teacakes side of the facility. Teacake then realised what the intermittent noise had been that he couldn’t put his finger on. The beep was very faint but there. They got back to Teacakes’ reception desk and listened, the beep was coming from the wall behind the desk. Teacake threw his desk chair at the wall, it went through really easy and made an even bigger hole when he pulled the chair back out. In the hole there was a red flashing light, at eye level, three feet to his left. BEEP. On the concealed interior wall, there were dials and gauges, long out of use and cut off from power which were set in an industrial looking corrugated metal framework unit which was painted in a sickly institutional green used back in the ‘70s. They needed a flashlight to read the writing on the unit. Teacake got himself into the hole and read ‘NTC Thermistor Breach, Sub-basement Level Four.’ ‘What the hell is sub basement level four? I thought there was only one.’ They find a schematic which shows SB-2, SB-3 and SB-4, which is where the light is flashing. Also, it shows what appears to be a tube ladder allowing access to the lower levels. They just have to find the entrance to it.

This is a great story, well written and thought out. I enjoy this type of book as I like horror and fantasy and I certainly don’t read enough of them. I rated this 5 out of 5.

This was a frightening story of what if. An intelligent fungus is making a bid to take over the world but doesn't take into account the resistance of the human race. High tension story with a great conclusion.

David Koepps’s Cold Storage begins in the 80’s as a serious sci fi story about a mutated virus discovered in the Australian outback and contained for over 30’s years in an underground bunker.
Introducing two security guards, a gang of crooks and bikers to the present day, the book takes a small left turn and reads like a fun sci-fi film from the 1980’s and it could not be better for it.
With a morbid sense of humour and with Koepp’s career as a screenwriter you can expect enough film references to keep any movie buff happy. Highly recommended.
This book was provided by Netgalley for an honest review

Just not what I was expecting really but as it’s a while since I requested it I can’t say if it was my mistake or a misleading blurb. Whatever the reason horror/sci fi aren’t my thing. I did read it all though and it seemed well researched but I found the weak love story uninteresting.

My thanks to HQ for an eARC via NetGalley of David Koepp’s ‘Cold Storage’ in exchange for an honest review. It was published on 3 September.

From the outset I was drawn into this exciting science fiction thriller and so opted to buy its audiobook edition, narrated by Rupert Friend, to allow for an immersive read/listen.

‘Cold Storage’ has a classic 50s B movie plot. In the 1970s scientists send a sample of a fungus into space abroad Skylab as part of a research project. Then in 1979 Skylab’s orbit decayed and reentered Earth’s atmosphere. A piece of it landed in a remote part of Western Australia and was kept by a local as a souvenir. Then in 1987 there is a frantic call to NASA claiming ‘something has come out of the tank’.

Major Roberto Diaz and Lt. Col. Trini Romano, who work for the Defence Nuclear Agency, are despatched to the site along with microbiologist Dr. Hero Martins to investigate. No spoilers but it’s quite an encounter. Afterward a sample of this clearly dangerous fungus, that Hero had speculated had been genetically altered while in space, is stored in a secret government safe site.

Years pass and the facility is decommissioned, the secret bits sealed and it becomes a private storage facility. Move forward to March 2019 as one night security personnel, Travis (Teacake) and Naomi, become aware of a persistent beep from somewhere in the building. Again, no spoilers but this was brilliant!

A mutated fungus from space with the potential to destroy all life on Earth versus a few plucky locals and a retired veteran - what’s not to love? It is terrifying, horrific in very visceral terms, yet also very funny.

Koepp is known for his screenwriting on Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and other blockbuster films, which indicates that he knows how to write heart-stopping action and relatable characters.

This was pure entertainment and highly recommended. I hope that he will be writing more thrillers in the future. Given its combination of retro science fiction threat and modern elements linked to climate change I also hope that ‘Cold Storage’ will be adapted to film.

Cold Storage by David Koepp

In 1987 an unknown fungus is discovered in a remote farmstead in Australia. It hasn’t left a soul alive. Bodies have been ripped apart by the fungus within. It arrived from space, it is merciless in its determination to survive, to adapt to new environments, to conquer anything in its path. The farmstead is bombed sky high but the American authorities have retained a small sample. It is sealed within a Cold War bunker in the US. But, when the Cold War ends and a storage company takes over the bunker, what are night-time security guards Teacake and Naomi to do when, one night, they hear a beeping noise coming from inside a wall? Something long forgotten has adapted. It has woken up.

David Koepp is a screenwriter who has worked on some of the biggest blockbusters, including Jurassic Park, and all of his blockbuster skills are put to good use in Cold Storage. This is a thoroughly entertaining, exhilarating and tense technothriller, which threatens to become apocalyptic, as something occurs to threaten all of mankind. I love this kind of book!

But at the heart of the book lies the people – Teacake and Naomi, we well as Roberto, who visited the farmstead back in 1987 and is something of a relic of the past, and maybe the only person living who understands the threat facing the planet. Most of the attention, though, is on Teacake and Naomi as the author takes his time to flesh out these two rather lonely and damaged souls. I loved how this was done. They’re brought together by a terrible thing, but we get to know them so well, just as they learn to trust one another. There is a real charm and sweetness to their developing relationship, despite the chaos around them, although I doubt anyone had ever considered ex-felon Teacake sweet and charming before. If only it weren’t for that beeping box.

Cold Storage is a pageturner of a thriller even if it does take its time when something else matters, such as the flowering of true love. We need to care about these people risking their lives to save the world. I loved the chapters written from the point of view of the cunning and horrible fungus as it documents its experiments along the way to achieving its true goal – feeding off every person alive. Some moments of the book are disgusting, as you’d expect from a disgusting fungus. Others are so tense. And all the time we root for Teacake and Naomi, this unlikely couple.

I read Cold Storage on a flight and it was the perfect read for it. The time disappeared in a flash. I’ll be watching out for more from David Koepp.

Sometimes you just need a book that takes you far away from reality, and Cold Storage ticks this box! After the Skylap spaceship crashes in 1979, an oxygen tank reacts with a cleaning agent and a fungal organism inside the tank begins its mutation that will ultimately threaten the future of the world. A sample of the parasitic fungus is buried three hundred feet underground and believed to be inert. But with rising temperatures it begins to leak and is discovered by two workers at the storage facility. Now begins a race against time to save the planet in the form of Roberto Diaz, Teacake and Naomi. As the fungus inhabits its hosts brain, it eventually leads to the body exploding which spreads the mutant fungus far and wide. The only thing that can stop the spread is a nuclear reactor, T-41 and right up until the last page, we are kept in suspense as to whether it is too late to stop the cordyceps novus apocalypse. A romping good read!

This was exactly the book I was looking for - fast paced, well researched, interesting characters and believable. I very rarely like film adaptations of books - but this is one of those books that you can imagine will one day probably make a great film. I don't want to use cliches like 'page turner; but some books are just that, they are impossible to put down and this was one of them. I really enjoyed it and I hope David Koepp has a few more ideas for books if they are as good as this one. Well worth a read.

I would not usually pic up a science fiction book, i find them hard to connect with , but the blurb for this book had me intrigued and the knowledge of who the author is. The book was interesting and certainly gave me chills with the premise and way the story developed. I give this book 3 stars s though i enjoyed it it was a heavy read for me but would be perfect for more regular readers of science-fiction

This, in my opinion, is a cross between Day of the Triffids and Men in Black with a touch of Indiana Jones.

I am not sure if I liked it but I finished reading it so it can't be that bad.

This was a fun read and totally daft. Would make an excellent B-Movie.
I do love a bit of cheesy horror and this proved to be a good holiday read. Silly and funny, with plenty of action and good characterisations.
What is there not to love about a space fungi that causes animals and humans to explode?!

Thanks to NetGalley and HQ for my ARC of this ebook.

Right off the bat, this was a story premise that I loved the sound of. I mean, a deadly fungus that can mutate and replicate at high speed ... what's not to love? The narrative was fast-paced throughout, and the characters interesting. However, I didn't find myself rooting for anyone in particular, except maybe for the elderly Agent who came out of retirement to try and fix things once they'd gone drastically wrong. Many of the other characters felt like a bit of a caricature outline, though they were fun enough.

Some scenes had me cringing while others had me laughing, all a mix that I like. A good book evokes responses from me, and this one certainly achieved that. The only reason I haven't awarded a full solid 5 stars is due to the chronic head hopping (jumping from one character point of view to another with no indication or warning). I lost count of the number of times I was reading from inside one person's head, only to discover--sometimes too late--that the narrative had hopped into someone else's head. This aspect of the book drove me nuts, quite frankly, and this loses it a full star.

So, all in all, a light, fun, and sometimes cringeworthy read that's easy to complete in one or two sittings.


***

NOTE ON RATINGS: I consider a 3-star rating a positive review. Picky about which books I give 5 stars to, I reserve this highest rating for the stories I find stunning and which moved me.

5 STARS: IT WAS AMAZING! I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN! — Highly Recommended.
4 STARS: I WOULD PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER — Go read this book.
3 STARS: IT WAS GOOD! — An okay read. Didn’t love it. Didn’t hate it.
2 STARS: I MAY HAVE LIKED A FEW THINGS —Lacking in some areas: writing, characterisation, and/or problematic plot lines.
1 STAR: NOT MY CUP OF TEA —Lots of issues with this book.

I couldn't warm to the cast of characters in this one and although I love a good dystopian, this whole premise didn't work for me.