The Patron Saint of Plagues

“Anderson has some serious writing chops, and he delivers a page turner that is at once a medical thriller, cyberpunk romp and provocative tease…a novel about race and class, science and faith.”—Salon.com

“A cinematic, futuristic techno-thriller with smarts and heart…This cleverly managed skein of cliffhangers and revelations begs to be filmed.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

“Very neat, impossible to put down, and I hope a book that gets nominated for some awards.”—Philadelphia Weekly Press

“This is Barth Anderson’s debut novel, and it’s a stunner…A book of high verisimilitude and exacting precision. Anderson has taken the monitory example of John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, a Cassandra mode too long left moldering, and combined it with a typical bio-thriller such as Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain to produce a hybrid that is both scientifically and science-fictionally robust and still propulsively suspenseful."—Sci Fi Weekly, Grade A

“An exciting journey full of surprises.”—Dallas Morning News

“The topic is timely (viruses and pandemics are hot), and the just-around-the-corner world is very well realized, full of smart extrapolations from today’s technologies and social conventions.”—Booklist

“Destined to find [a] highly appreciative audience…Anderson successfully joins with Greg Bear, Paul McAuley, and a few others in wedding genuinely SFnal speculation with the template of the formula thriller. There’s a genuinely thoughtful SF mind at work in The Patron Saint of Plagues.”—Locus

“A well-constructed, politically aware techno-thriller with an intriguing plot…when ‘best first novel’ lists get discussed next January this book will be one of the first suggested.”—Emerald City

“Tense, plausible and twisty enough to keep you breathless and guessing.”—Agony Column

“An apocalyptic prophesy masquerading as a near-future pandemic revenge thriller…riveting reading.”—Strange Horizons

“A smart, entertaining, imminently readable book.”—Maureen McHugh, author of Mothers & Other Monsters

“Barth Anderson’s inventive viral emergency may be set in a speculative near future of saints and cyborgs, but it has a persuasive real-world urgency. He nails the gritty essence of disease detection: frustration, exhaustion, obsession.”—Maryn McKenna, author of Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service

"The topic is timely (viruses and pandemics are hot), and the just-around-the-corner world is very well realized, full of smart extrapolations from today’s technologies and social conventions."—Booklist