A book I am going to read for a Biology assignment. 
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 August 19th, 2011 
 This book is about the lethal viruses Marburg and Ebola and how the viruses developed a Hot Zone in areas of Africa and even in a monkey house in Virginia. 
 The book opens with Charles Monet, a Frenchman who works on a sugar cane plantation in Africa. He and a woman friend go to visit Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano in Africa. They visit Kitum Cave and Charles Monet accidentally pricks his finger on a crystal, which causes him to catch Marburg and die a week later. Of course, he just HAS to give it to other people before he dies so that they spread it to other people and die, then the other people spread it and die, and then the whole cycle repeats over again til everyone is dead. By the way this IS a true story, so if that did happen we wouldn't be here... but the truth is Marburg & Ebola killed A LOT of people. 
 The book doesn't really have one or two main characters. It jumps to new characters every 10 pages or so, since most of the characters that are introduced to us die in 2 weeks time. The first half of the book describes the viruses and tells stories of people who catch the virus and die, and the second half of the book is searching for the origin of the virus and trying to deplete the virus and banish it from the face of the earth. 
 I did enjoy it, but I would have enjoyed it 10x more if I didn't have to rush and try to read it in a week while doing others things such as homework, school, etc. *hates being told what to read*. It's not really my type of book except for the-whole-world-is-dying part... wait, that sounded really sadistic... 
 I was also really sad because they were killing monkeys and guinea pigs like it was the Texas chain saw massacre and then were dissecting them to try to find out where the virus came from. That really upset me. 
 Overall, it kept me fairly interested for the first half of the book. 
 I did have to speed read (I didn't even finish in time, I had to have help from my brother to finish the assignment since it was 7am on the morning it was due and I still had 100 pages to read). I recommend it to dystopian lovers and/or science lovers. 
 3 STARS! :D 
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 Awaiting test results. (crosses fingers for A)