12·21 is a thriller of the pandemic variety. This time, instead of a bacteria or virus being the cause of a widespread killer disease, the culprit is a prion. What’s a prion? What I gathered from the book is that prions are proteins that can reproduce on their own, they can become infectious, and they are the cause of Mad Cow disease. Not pleasant.
In 12·21, Thomason pairs a seemingly incurable prion disease with supposed Mayan predictions about the end of the world on December 21, 2012. I say supposed predictions because most people don’t really believe that the world will end on 12-21. Thomason mixes science, superstition and history to create an intriguing tale. Can modern science find a cure for an ancient disease?
I loved the Mayan glyphs that Thomason sprinkles throughout the book. I can’t make heads or tails of them, but they are fascinating to look at and to its interesting to contemplate the society that communicated through the ages with this “picture” language.
I would recommend this book to any who enjoy reading fiction about epidemics, prophecies and Mayan civilization.