The science was all over the place. It’s like the author know things exist, but doesn’t grasp high-school level science. And yet, he has to insist on putting numbers and citing things all over the book.

Really, nobody between the smartest people on Earth anticipated that they would find a predator? The idea that a food network is what keeps the population of most species stable isn’t even high-school level, we teach it to younger children. That’s way to much contempt to the book characters and to the reader. And also, could the author skip a single chapter without pretending that mitochondria is some kind of primordial organelle? Everybody knows the thing multiplies in an atmosphere, and yet nobody at all imagined the all-purpose lab needed an atmospheric sampler? And also, was there no physicist on the team or low temperature freezers were out of stock?

The book starts as a very good one. Enticing to read. But by the time it gets to the climax those things have accumulated so much that it isn’t interesting anymore.