Cobalt Blue

Product Information

Ever since an experimental space mission bestowed extraordinary powers on two individuals – a Russian military commander and an American scientist – the two nations have been locked in an uneasy truce. We are looking at the story through Cassie’s eyes, as she is re-living moments from her past, as well as stories she has been told from her mother, Cobalt’s, past.

I love MR's books and usually don't mind if a lot of his characters (particularly his male main characters) feel the same or act as cardboard cutouts. This means that when the children go to fight The Fury, they are like the equivalent of a young teenager fighting a fully trained soldier. Seeing Cassie's confusion, Argentov gloats that since she is unlike her siblings in that she was born naturally, the Fury wants to use her to seed his race of superhumans and will keep her as a slave. Then again I might just be clued into this style and can more easily get ahead of the story than I could before.However, in his recent outings, including the atrocious movie 'Interceptor' written by the author himself, he has resorted to cliches built upon cliches ending in stale action set pieces. A year earlier, Cassie and her parents were invited by Black to his lab, wanting to discuss plans to handle the Fury when Cobalt inevitably dies.

Despite an attempt at fleeing, Kazan managed to snatch Arnold from Cassie and broke his spine with a single punch, crippling him. Cobalt Blue was much older than Fury when she got superpowers, which unfortunately don’t stop aging and heart failure. The story grabs you from the very beginning and takes on an emotional journey of fear, great sadness but with joy tinged with ‘what happens next”. With each country having a superhero, we get a truce of sorts similar to the nuclear standoff during the Cold War. The violence was OTT gory for a book aimed at teens, and the losses our heroine sustains seem not to have much impact on her.While the other three argued about the previous incidents, the Fury eventually spoke up and asked to speak to Cobalt alone.

In a secret lab somewhere in Siberia, the Fury of Russia's last son, the Fury of Sevastopol, otherwise known as the Genius, watches the news reports on the Fury's death. As is typical of Matthew Reilly books, the pace of the book is wild, seemingly like watching an action movie. The story picks up 35yrs after the discovery of the original probe, after all these events have taken place.The amount of sexual violence - both real and threatened- in this book (which is really a novella) is extremely off-putting. In the end, there is a short interview with the author where he claims this novella was initially a movie script. In the face of an overwhelming attack, one young woman-unassuming and anonymous-might be America's only hope. The narrator did a decent job, even though the Russian accents were a bit much - but hearing the cringey, ridiculous plot read aloud was embarrassing. To much surprise, Cobalt also became pregnant to her husband, giving birth to a young girl, Cassie, although her parents elected to keep her identity a secret from the public.

Did the Furys' have a PR meeting where they decided murder was fine but "sex slave" instead of "whore" (or literally anything else) was more PC? Every character in the book is either a caricature or a cardboard cutout, with two egregious examples of absolutely terrible character writing. A novella by definition, the book deals with a world where the United States and Russia have a superhero, each acting as nuclear deterrents in an alternate timeline. The villain is, of course, Russian which means he rapes women, is a serial killer and is just an absolutely atrocious guy. Because of this busy time, and the original purpose of the text, this novella adaption he has released is leagues beneath the quality of his prior work.

A quick read on a Swiss train,when the appeal of the snow capped mountains started to fade (after several hours).