Killer fungus! Who knew a novel about killer fungus escaping from a containment facility many subbasements below a conventional storage facility could be both so gross and so funny? Roberto and Trini are Air Force Officers detailed to the USG agency responsible for dealing with WMD in the 1980s and 1990s and they are the ones who bring a sample of this awful thing back to the US where it's put in a facility and meant never to get out. Well, best laid plans. Fast forward to the present and Tea Cake and Naomi are security guards working the night shift at the facility and they keep hearing a beep so of course they have to investigate. They aren't the ones who unleash the fungus- how it gets out is again, afoul of best laid plans- but they, along with Roberto, who is called out of retirement, have to deal with it. This is a hoot. LOL funny in spots. Koepp knows how to build tension, create implausible but hmmm scenes (the deer in the elevator), and to keep things moving. You don't need a lot of back story on any of these characters but you're gonna root for them. Thanks to the publisher for the ArC. I enjoyed this so much more than I expected, largely because Koepp is a great storyteller and this is a wild ride!

First off I would like to thank Netgalley and HarperCollins for this advanced copy in exchange for an hones review.

Cold Storage is a fast-paced, high-octane summer blockbuster of a thrill ride! I could not put this book down! Roberto Diaz is responsible for locking down a biochemical attack at first glance, but then discovers that it is actually an aging and evolving fungus spore with the potential to wide out and infect the entire human population. I feel that this novel took some strong inspiration from Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. It is a race against time, edge of your seat thrill ride. David Koepp sure knows how to write a story that plays out like a summer blockbuster, especially considering his resume which includes work on famous movies such as Jurassic Park, Spider-Man and War of the Worlds. I would highly recommend this for fans of fast-paced sci-fi thrillers or for fans of Michael Crichton.

Cold Storage is part sci-fi thriller, part conspiracy cover-up, and all-out b-movie cheese. Although written by first-time novelist David Koepp, this is hardly his first dance with a cursor. Maybe you have seen some of his screenplays up on the big screen. Jurassic Park. Spider-Man. You know, little indie wanna-be type films. He also directed that creepy-cool, Kevin Bacon helmer Stir of Echoes. Unfortunately, he also wrote the screenplays for Snake-Eyes and Toy Soldiers. His novel? Cold Storage? Jurassic Park in scope, but Carlito’s Way in performance.

The plot is amusing; the pace catchy. A semi-sentient fungus crashes on Earth courtesy of SkyLab (Millennials, see the Wikipedia entry). Hotshot agent Roberto Diaz contains it deep under the Appalachians never to be heard from again. Until global warming hits and that deep underground bunker is no longer a cold as it used to be. Plus, and because capitalism, the bunker has since been retrofitted as a consumer storage units. The virus breaks free in present-day Kansas where two minimum-wage employees confront it, their drunk supervisor, and possible feelings for each other, head on. Insanity and hilarity ensue.

Koepp’s characters are fun and reactive. Their interaction amplifies the situational action. Koepp also brings a voice to the creeping fungus. Its instincts evolve and darken as the story builds. Unpredictably, simple-celled organism steals the show. By contrast, the internal dialogue of the humans is sometimes confusing and often distracting. Koepp’s own ongoing narration is hilariously inconsistent jumping from that of a kindly observer keen to tell a tale over warm chicken pot pie and a cold Guinness to a sarcastic deity scoffing at the idiots left running the store. Whereas the former kindles a touch of sympathy, the later asks with a wink that y’all still paying attention, right?

Well, half-right.

The story is fun. Koepp’s writing style is easy. All the primal notes were hit and played - good vs. evil; man vs. nature; wisdom vs. incompetence – and swirled into sticky pop-culture candy.


Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for the advance read and the HAZMAT suit.

Well-written, engrossing science fiction/horror story featuring likeable characters and a solid storyline. Some parts of the book are downright creepy because they are little too close to reality. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This was an enjoyable, fast read. It's kind of like a mashup between Andromeda Strain and a Zombie story. The plot had me rolling my eyes a little bit here and there, especially in the last third of the book, but the writing was very solid.

A page-turner obviously written by a screenwriter, which is a good thing if you're looking for a book packed with action and interesting situations. Good stuff.

I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

Thank you to NetGalley, Ecco, and David Koepp for the advance reader copy of “Cold Storage”. Cold Storage is a techno thriller in the mode of Michael Crichton, which makes total sense because Koepp wrote the screenplay for Jurassic Park! Along with Jurassic Park, Koepp has been a part of several epic screenplays, often working with the big dog Mr. Spielberg himself, along with the first Mission Impossible, and Spiderman 2. A Plus pedigree for sure. Cold Storage story is an extinction-level destruction bacteria sci fi adventure, and it certainly is a page turner. Three strangers, one bioterror operative and a couple of regular folks try to save the world! I did enjoy the ride, it is a quick read with some suspension of disbelief required. It is an apocalyptic bioterror novel after all. The one criticism I have with the novel, and I think a lot folks will agree, is that it does read like a screenplay. Still entertaining, but the characters are not fleshed out, and seemed kind of rushed. If you are looking for a quick entertaining read similar to his action packed screenplays, it will certainly be worth it. Thanks for reading. #coldstorage #netgalley

“Cold Storage” is a highly entertaining and enjoyable book about a deadly contagion that threatens to destroy all living things. Sounds heavy and technical, but it’s just the opposite. Quirky characters, lots of humorous moments liberally sprinkled throughout the book, and a somewhat plausible storyline made this a fun read. Plenty of action and the scientific jargon is kept to a minimum. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a light and easy novel. Well done!
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through @NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review and thanks to Blake Crouch for mentioning this as one of the books that stood out to him in a recent AMA thread on reddit.

This book was different than I expected but I loved it anyway. If you like the humorous horror ala Strand, Crouch, Kilborn/Konrath, etc then you will love this book.

A new and extremely deadly virus outbreak is discovered and the only sample is buried deep underground. Decades later the facility has changed hands, the virus escapes....and hilarious horror ensues.

Koepp is well known as a screen writer but this is his first foray into books..its a fantastic debut novel. I loved the light and humorous writing style and changing the perspective from chapter to chapter - seeing the world through the virus' eyes was very effective.

Super fun, fast read...highly recommended for summer entertainment.

An apocalyptic fungus has arrived via space station debris in an extremely remote location of Australia. Within days it has wiped out the village, so Trini and Roberto, along with a scientist are sent to eradicate it. They then store the sample they took in an underground government facility in cold storage. Twenty some odd years down the road the site is sold and becomes a storage rental facility, and with global warming along with mismanagement the fungus grows again. It’s a good fast read with interesting characters but A. Why even keep a sample of the fungus if it’s that deadly, and B. the storyline once the fungus re-emerges is too short.

I love end-of-the-world stories, and this one is a dilly! First-time author Koepp has written a terrific, fast-moving thriller. In 1987 two Air Force investigators join a scientist in Australia to investigate a small town where everyone has disappeared. (Sounds like Crichton's ANDROMEDA STRAIN.) They discover that everyone climbed to the roofs of their houses and died in gruesome ways. They also discover the cause - a rare, deadly fungus that is difficult to control and easy to spread. Of course, they bring a sample back with them to the U.S., and store it in a "secure" government facility. Fast forward to 2019, when, due to global warming, the fungus has awakened and is causing trouble. The author's writing is fast and furious, skillful, and descriptive enough to put me right in the middle of the action. I loved it!

I didn’t dislike Cold Storage. I think. Mostly I couldn’t get my head around the part where a woman manages to shoot herself straight in the heart with a (not .22) pistol through the o2 port in the front of her Hazmat suit and manages to keep the suit intact. I’m not well-versed in guns and Hazmat suits but when you hit something like that that you doubt so early on in the story, it makes it very hard to get back into it at all. It was worsened by the fact that there were many aspects of the book that I found to be hilarious that I wasn’t entirely sure were meant to be funny. (I have decided, for the sake of this review, to assume that they were meant to be funny. In fact, I’m going so far as to bill this as a thriller-comedy.)

There were some good lines in Cold Storage. In particular, I laughed at:

“Yes, He was kind and loving, but He also invented colorectal cancer, and is there a supervillain anywhere, ever, who came up with a more diabolical way to take somebody out than than?””

David Koepp, Cold Storage

Even though Cordyceps is getting a bit old as a ‘villain’, it was still fun to watch Koepp put his spin on things. I mean, I don’t think the idea of a fungus that can completely take over a human body and use it as a walking spore sac is ever going to be boring, do you?

There was plenty of action in Cold Storage to accompany the laughs. The laughs aren’t of the sharp,snarky type, though, so I’m not sure how this got heralded as “for fans of Andy Weir.” The dialogue was ok. The pacing was pretty tight. There’s enough going for this novel that some people are really going to get a kick out of it.

Overall, not really my cuppa, but I do thank the publishers and Netgalley for giving me a chance to try it out.

David Koepp maanges to write a terrifying Sci-Fi novel that is part Jurassic Park and part The Hot Zone! Cold Storage kept me in the edge of my seat, because of this I couldn't put it down.

* I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller kept me turning pages long into the night. What surprised me most was how often I found myself laughing out loud. .

Cold storage is a fast moving thriller in which an extraterrestrial fungus threatens to destroy the earth. Highly competent government employees/retirees and a couple of unlikely heroes star in this page turner. A very satisfying read.

An enjoyable hard science thriller that was an easy read concerning an organism brought back from space that is very adaptable and has the potential to become the end of everything. Once thought contained decades ago, it has found a way to escape and virtually no one is still around who understands the extreme danger this organism represents except the agent, now considerably older, who originally helped to contain it so long ago. While the dust jacket/summary makes it sound like the agent is the focus throughout the book, in reality the main part of the story actually focuses on two security guard characters from the storage facility where the organism has been kept all these years and while the older agent is once again called upon to help contain it, it's these two security guards that ultimately must carry the story. I do wish the story ending (before the epilogue) had been fleshed out more and described in real time.

Cold Storage is a great sci-fi thriller! David Koepp has written a page turner that will keep you involved until the final page.

David Koepp is a master of suspense and story, as he has proved in film. It's nice to see this author's work transported from the silver screen to the written page. Cold Storage was gripping, well done, and I look forward to reading more from Koepp soon.

Koepp has written a believable thriller. I could not put the book down. The action builds as the book progresses. I enjoyed following the aging of the characters, it was funny.

A good book about a deadly fungus that came from outer space. A fungus that has the flexibility to attack all systems designed to contain it has been buried for a generation in an underground vault and a secure site which has been sold off to a storage company. The fungus works to escape and take over the world. A fun read where the fungus can bring things back from the dead in order to pursue it desire to spread. Worth a read.
Thank you Netgalley, David Koepp, HarperCollins Publishers and Ecco for the ARC for my honest review.