Rating: 
Summary: Frankenstein Meets Da Vinci Meets the Sopranos! Too much!
Review: "It's the story of two titans, in their own separate arenas, yet strangely similar in their hubris, who had achieved greatness but suffered tragic faults. Senator Butler's was a love of power, which had evolved from a means to an end and of itself. Dr. Lowell's, I'd guess, was a desire for financial recognition and celebrity status appropriate in his mind to his intellect and contribution. When these two men collided by conspiring to use each other for their own purposes, their tragic fault literally brought them down." (Epilogue, 382)Carol Manning's final character assessment of protagonists Dr. Daniel Lowell and Senator Butler basically says it all. I guess the central idea here is, as Robin Cook says, "the regrettable collision of politics and rapidly advancing bioscience" (Author's Note, 386). ...And honestly, if the plot focused more around the Frankenstein-like theme of the irresponsibility of scientific research and innapropriate political influence in this arena, the story would have been much more effective. Dr. Cook, however, also felt the need to not only include a sub plot about a mafia-connected investor but also to capitalize on the success of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" by including controversial information about the authenticity of the Shroud of Tourin. He even mentions Leonardo Da Vinci at one point! Unethical biotechnology, religious relics, organized crime - there were just too many different things crammed into one story! It got so ridiculous that, after establishing the plot in the first few chapters, I skimmed through most of the book. Ironically, the last chapter and the epilogue really gave me all I needed to understand Butler's and Lowell's fate. The best part of the book was Dr. Cook's "Author's Note", which provided some very interesting commentary about the unethical relationship between medical reserach and politics. Other than that, this was book was extremely disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring Boring Boring
Review: After struggling through 460 pages of boredom nothing happened.
Rating:
Summary: What has happened to Robin Cook?
Review: Although this book is a slight improvement over Cook's dismal previous book ("Shock"), that's not saying much. "Seizure" starts promisingly, but quickly deteriorates into a series of contrived, dreary chase scenes. Cook also embarrasses himself by including the Shroud of Turin as a plot element; this serves no apparent purpose beyond padding the novel with a lengthy detour to Italy. The story ends abruptly, with all the loose ends tied up in an amateurish final chapter. Perhaps Cook's fame has made him immune to editorial interference; if he had written like this early in his career, we would never have heard of him. For well-written medical fiction, try Michael Palmer instead.
Rating:
Summary: What has happened to Robin Cook?
Review: Although this book is a slight improvement over Cook's dismal previous book ("Shock"), that's not saying much. "Seizure" starts promisingly, but quickly deteriorates into a series of contrived, dreary chase scenes. Cook also embarrasses himself by including the Shroud of Turin as a plot element; this serves no apparent purpose beyond padding the novel with a lengthy detour to Italy. The story ends abruptly, with all the loose ends tied up in an amateurish final chapter. Perhaps Cook's fame has made him immune to editorial interference; if he had written like this early in his career, we would never have heard of him. For well-written medical fiction, try Michael Palmer instead.
Rating:
Summary: Seizure was DOA!!
Review: As a real fan of Dr. Cook's novels I was delighted to see "Seizure" released. However, from the very beginning this book was a real letdown. The two lead characters were total losers, the male, Dr. Daniel Lowell was a self described "egotistical jerk" and his main squeeze, a 20 year younger "raven-haired beauty" wasn't much more sympathetic. As a reader, if I can't sympathize and identify w/the main characters, or even like them, why do I care about what happens to them? And in this book, I didn't. Made for some pretty dull reading as you can imagine. I struggled thru the entire book, hoping all the way that it would get better, but it doesn't. Won't spoil the ending for you, but it wasn't worth the read. If you want to check out Dr. Cook, try some of his older novels like Coma or Sphinx. At least in those you can stomach the main participants.
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre
Review: As long as Robin Cook stuck to pure medical thrillers without the story venturing outside this subject and the US border, he was OK. In "Seizure" he went to Europe looking for the Shroud of Turin of all things. Unfortunately he found it and mixed it -unsuccesfully- with high tech genetic therapy, mobsters, academia and political maneuvering resulting in an improbable, implausible and weak story. In the past Mr. Cook could be relied upon for a relaxing unsophisticated medical thriller, but not any more. He did what most failing chefs do: instead of conjuring innovative recipes with the minimum number of ingedients he tried to make up for his shortcomings by throwing into the pot everthying he could lay he hands upon.
Rating:
Summary: Not one of Cook's better novels
Review: Because the release of the book "Seizure" was delayed for a long time, I had built up a lot of anticipation for it. I was disappointed. This is definitely not one of Cook's better novels. Conservative senator Ashley Butler, stricken with Parkinson's, strikes a deal with Daniel Lowell, founder of a biotech company on the verge of a breakthrough in therapeutic cloning. Butler will aid, rather than oppose, the legalization of the groundbreaking cloning technique if he can be the first unauthorized human recipient of the treatment. The preparation for the surgery takes up almost the entire book. The procedure itself and its dire consequences come so late in the story that they are anticlimactic. The ending is predictable. There are many preposterous subplots and secondary characters that further dilute an already weak plot. These include use of blood from the shroud of Turin for the cloning (and the Keystone Kops attempt of the Catholic Church to prevent it), a bumbling group of mobsters that try to foil the procedure for their own misguided reasons, and the interactions between Lowell and the greedy owners of the Bahamian clinic where the procedure is to take place. Although the issues surrounding stem cell research and medical ethics are thought-provoking, this story is nothing more than a platform to present them. Cook does not miss the opportunity at every turn to remind us of the good and bad uses of cloning and the evils of political interference in medical research. If you are a medical thriller junkie, you will probably read this novel in spite of the poor reviews it has gotten on Amazon. But remember that I warned you!
Rating: 
Summary: Robin Cook's BEST!
Review: BOTH MY HUSBAND AND I WERE EQUALLY PLEASED WITH ROBIN COOK'S
LATEST BOOK "SEIZURE"...WE HAVE READ ALL HIS BOOKS AND AGREED
THAT THIS IS HIS BEST TO DATE! ONE DID NOT HAVE TO HAVE A MEDICAL
BACKGROUND TO APPRECIATE (AS A LAYPERSON) WHAT WAS INVOLVED
IN AN EXCITING PLOT THAT HAD TWISTS AND TURNS AND BECAME A
THRILLING, SUSPENCEFUL PAGE TURNER, RIGHT UP TO THE END.
WE CAN'T WAIT FOR HIS NEXT BOOK!!!
Rating:
Summary: It's sad to witness the decline of a once-talented writer
Review: Cook has gone the way of Alistair McLean, Frederick Forsythe, and <gasp> Pat Conroy -- folx who kept on writing long after they had anything to say or any talent left for wordsmithing. I thought SEIZURE's predecessor SHOCK was awful, and I came to this one as a former Cook fan and admirer hoping that he had undergone some form of rehab to his former formidable glory. But, alas... This book smacks potboiler-like of the terrible DaVinci Code (Brown) and its even worse progenitor Daughter of God (Perdue) with their religious connections/themes, totally cardboard characters, and bunkum, swiss-cheesy plots. Cook's very best book is his almost-non-fiction Year of the Intern, and many, many of his subsequent books are grippers with real characters, real plots, real medical information, and real messages. If you haven't read these earlier Cook works, please don't allow the last two (mentioned above) to turn you away from his earlier work, as they surely must.
Rating: 
Summary: 3 1/2 is more accurate
Review: For a while, I thought that this was going to be a terrific book. Most of his stories have the same basic stroy line, however this one is rather original. Though I enjoyed this variety, I was still upset with several things that happened later on. It seemed as though he ended the novel where he did so that it would not be very long. It was far too sudden of an ending. Also, I was so interested in this novel mainly because I have termporal lobe epilepsy. The problem was not only that the novel had a very small part dealing with the epilepsy. The other problem was that my seizures are much different. I can remember when they happen, and, when I have one, I am not able to think clear enough to speak clearly. The only similarity is that I do have weird tastes, where as Butler had weird smells. In the end I was disipointed in the end because it was too fast, and what little was there that I was hoping for did not come the way I was expecting. However, if you do not care about the end of the novel, then the rest of it was good, because it gave a more original type of story.
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