Introduction to the novel would be something like this: A brilliant American Irish scientists is driven mad when his wife dies as a result of IRA bomb attack. So, he creates a virus that will kill all women on Ireland...Will the virus spread?There are a lot of fascinating themes in this novel and it functions great as a thriller as well. The way that the history of the Irish is presented is just brilliant. It is not a stereotypical view of the Irish. He really goes into the dept, exploring frust...

I absolutely loved this book. I already knew Herbert was a master of the genre, a man that has achieved in writing few have achieved, and I knew he wrote the "Dune" series, but when I took The White Plague off the shelve, I really didn't make the connection between Frank Herbert the author of this book, and THE Frank Herbert. Good thing I realised it at the middle of the book, when I took another look to see who wrote this amazing story, and I was like : "oh. now it makes sense. now you tell me....

The basic tenor/plot can be summarized by this line in the book: "What did I expect? He wondered. Not this."Several issues examined:+If the world faces major calamity, will the governments fail and basic brutal survival prevail and the veneer of civilization disintegrate?+Nature and critique of terrorism and the purpose and distortions of revenge.+Do people consider the ramifications and ethics of science?+Church's role in society.+Tedious replication of retribution and the endless double-thinki...

This book was torture. The only character that was somewhat likeable and had a more developed personality died soon after her introduction; the other characters were wholly unlikeable. The story was long and tedious, like what I would expect a sci-fi fan in a writing class to try and pass off as epic merely because they scribbled over a thousand pages. I stuck with it because I try to complete most books and I wanted to see if it got better. Here's where the spoilers are. Now the worst part is y...

I had read several of Herbert's novels before this one, but this is the one that made me put them all down forever. I live with misogyny every day. I do not read SF to find more virulent forms. No need to reread Handmaid's Tale or the rest of the genre. Atwood was at least on my side.

I expected better from Herbert. What I liked: The disease. I liked that the invention and distribution of the disease was described as the investigators figured it out rather than as the Madman was doing it. I liked the idea of the targeted disease. The politics. The way the different countries failed to come together in the face of a world-wide catastrophe was plausible. The turn against science... while only briefly touched on, the way the angry masses turned on scientists was believable. What...

It took me a long time to finish this book, and I had a like-hate relationship with it the entire time. However, I think a huge part of the problem was a mismatch between what I wanted (and expected) the book to be and what Herbert actually wrote. I don't mean that he failed to make good on his promises to the reader. I mean that I had preconceived notions about how I thought the plot would be handled, based on reading a summary of the book elsewhere.The story is about a man who is in Ireland fo...

It has just occurred to me how relevant for our times 'The White Plague' has become with the pandemic and everything. It is indeed a burning topic for our time as we are so vulnerable to biological attacks on a global level. The White Plague is a work of fiction, but it feels so real.I picked up and read this book back in 2011, mostly because it was written by Frank Herbert and I really am a long time fan of the Dune Universe, so that was enough of a recommendation for me. I ended up really enjo...

I've been looking forward to getting hold of a copy of this for a while. A brilliant premise: a plague that targets women only. Imagine. So how such a great story could be made so boring is a wonder. It's almost as if Herbert decided to write about anything and everything that wasn't actually to do with the plague or its effects. At one point, just as the virus was being first encountered and taking a deadly toll across the world, chapters and chapters were devoted to the small team of scientist...

Disclaimer: I gave up halfway through, so this really only talks about the first half of the book.*The main reason I didn't like this book, and the reason I eventually stopped reading, was that in this book, both the bad guy AND the author treat women as props whose deaths only matter in the affect they have on men. In-universe, the bad guy's motivation for creating the plague was: "I'm going to kill all the women so the whole world can experience the pain I had!!!" Like what? Do you somehow not...

Frustrating. Herbert is great at big ideas and thoroughly thinking them through, showing how each and every aspect of life and society might be impacted (see Dune). This novel has another great idea, that of a man-made pandemic. It delves even deeper than a typical end-of-the-world story, though, by setting the villian and a few other characters on a long, quiet walk through what's left of Ireland, showing how the plague has warped life. He also manages to show how Ireland is so immersed in its

I give up. I can´t understand, who the author hated the most when writing this: the Irish, the men, or the women. Neither am I sure he has ever talked to a real live woman.

Marvelous if somewhat (unavoidably) dated... a morality piece in sci-fi/speculative fiction clothing. The science is meticulous, given the time period in which it was written. Herbert brings his epic sense, as rendered so masterfully in the Dune books, down to Earth on a slightly smaller scale. Recommended.

Molecular biologist John Roe O'Neill is on vacation in Ireland when a bomb explodes and kills his wife and two children. The trauma splits his personality and he splices genes into viruses and contaminates bacteria with them, creating a disease that targets women and speeds up their aging. When he releases the bacteria in Ireland, England and Libya, the plague begins to spread around the world and governments have to close their border and expel these countries' nationals. And Barrier Command un...

I actually prefer this book to Herbert's legendary "Dune". Why? Because it speaks in and of a world I live in. Not cience fiction in the bastardized form we see today, but a true "speculative fiction" page-turner. A well-written story of bio-terrorism that gets out of hand that not only deals with the detective story of how to stop the plague, but what effects will society and politics see out of it as the targeted disease breaks out of the Middle East and ravages all corners of the world?I am g...

Man, this was a harrowing read! Made all the more so because of its plausibility. I don't know if the science was up to it at the time the book was written but the titular plague, which is carried by males unsymptomatically but kills all females, is more than possible today. Terrifying.The book is very well written and engaging but I did have a couple of grumbles, the first being that Herbert utilises national stereotypes quite a bit, which was a bit irritating. He also clearly HATES the British...

This might be the worst book I have ever read. A good example of how if a book isn't any good 3/4 of the way through, it will never be good. Extremely slow and uninteresting, and filled with bland characters that can be easily confused for one another because they lack any distinct personality. The characters that the protagonist meets in Ireland are certainly the most interesting. But moments of interest are few and far between. Many of problems that arise because of the protagonist's plague se...

*exhales long, exasperated breath* Let me complain about this book at you. Spoilers abound!1) Yes, a completely reasonable reaction to your wife and children's death in a terrorist attack is to UNLEASH BIOLOGICAL WARFARE.1a) Okay, so you're mad at Ireland because that's where the attack happened. And you're mad at Great Britain because if the English hadn't been being dicks to the Irish for hundreds of years, the terrorists would never have developed. But why Libya? Just in a general "fuck all t...

Gets pretty thick, towards the end - but still raises quite a few questions which aren't contemplated nearly enough in this world.A great read for anyone interested in science, philosophy, and/or medical ethics.

I am very confused. I absolutely love the Dune series and liked a few other works of Herbert's as well. . But this one? It makes me feel he lost a bet or intentionally wanted to write something... not good. This book was tedious, annoying and overall pointless. It has a good premise (though far from original) and chooses to present anything but the interesting parts of it. Here are the main issues:- the story. It's complete nonsense if you thing about it. The most brilliant of the brilliant rese...