Nayler really has two or three stories going here which are minimally intertwined. Unfortunately, this means he doesn’t fully flesh out any of them enough to make it a really great story. This book feels like it is in the vein of classic Michael Crichton novels - Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo… but Crichton never let the details of science get in the way of writing a rollicking story. I feel like Naylor makes the opposite choice, and so instead we get a story with fewer scientific gaps, but also something less fun than a Crichton novel.

I would’ve loved to read a story that only took the octopus story line and evolved it quite a bit further. Oh well.