The Silent Count is an interesting read on a subject—climate change—at the forefront of modern life. Author E. A. Smiroldo builds a lot of suspense in the life of Dara Bouldin, a young nuclear engineer who has just received her Ph.D. Dara has developed a plan to reverse climate change and has been picked up by the CIA to participate in a clandestine assignment. Unfortunately, her personal life isn’t going as well as her professional life at this point. Her mother died when she was young, and she was raised by her father. Dara’s student loans and later her salary are being devoured by her efforts to help her father get out from under his heavy gambling debts. She’s broken an engagement with a long-term rock star boyfriend, though they remain in contact. She turns twenty-three years old during the book, so she’s really too young to understand the ethical concerns of her invention.
Without dumbing down the subject too much, Smiroldo—herself a physicist—successfully simplifies the physics so the reader can grasp them. She also looks at the ethics of climate change, why we refuse to change our ways of life to fix the problem. There are many naysayers regarding climate change, and one issue that emerges is who we should trust to lead us out of this morass, those that claim science is “fake news” or actual scientists. I enjoyed this book to a degree. Somehow the writing isn’t quite sophisticated enough to really capture my heart. It reads as a debut novel.
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The Silent Count (Independently published, July 12, 2022) is available through:
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