Inferior sequel to a middling technothriller, this time with elements reminiscent of 70s and 80s sci-fi/horror movies. Surviving characters from the first book are treated rather poorly; one is apparently confined to a straitjacket 24/7 to avoid committing suicide, a remarkably shortsighted mental health strategy. Another is now a hobo? A third was critically injured and disabled at the end of the first novel but is now perfectly fine because ... reasons.

Some of these broken men (only men, because the female characters in the first book all died) join a new character, the petulant, horny, shockingly unprofessional nuclear weapons expert (?) Gideon Crew, to sneak down to the Antarctic Ocean in a boat to nuke an alien underwater tree. Couldn't the US government better handle this grave existential crisis to Earth? Nope, because ... reasons. Even after the crew's lack of professionalism and terrible decision-making results in their mission teetering on the brink of failure, nobody thinks to pick up the phone and call for backup.

After stacking the odds against our protagonists (Brain worms! Zombies! Mutiny! Beatles references!), the last chapters resolve with a shrug and a vague waving of a hand, as if the authors just got bored with plotting their way through the climax. An afterword from the authors state that they had not planned to pen a sequel, but they received too many demands from fans to ignore. They should have left it alone.