Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen's Wheelers is an interesting and heavily detailed science fiction thriller. Though set primarily in the year 2210, the story revolves around the past. With lengthy, mystic passages and a cast of intriguing characters, Wheelers is slow at the start and gets rolling about halfway through the book, but there is no stopping or getting around the harrowing climax.

Archaeologist Prudence Odingo is working on a dig when she unearths a wheeled discovery. The artifact may prove the existence of lifeforms from more than 100,000 years ago. After a falling out about the find with cohort Charlie Dunsmoore, Prudence returns home to visit with her sister, Charity, and nephew, Moses.

Charity runs a sort of zoo, taking care of wildlife preservation. Her young son helps with the animals and possesses an uncanny ability to learn and remember new things. When Prudence arrives, everything in their lives change. Perhaps jealous over the discovery of wheelers, Dunsmoore has Prudence arrested for criminal fraud.

Before she can be sentenced, the wheelers come to life, levitating. The activity of the wheelers causes the moons around Jupiter to change orbits. The shift in orbits disrupts the natural balance of gravity, causing a giant comet to rocket directly toward Earth. Ghastly aliens living on Jupiter are angry with humans. With a war underway and a comet on a collision course aimed at destroying Earth, Prudence, Dunsmoore and Moses are faced with two questions: What in the universe is going on? And how can they stop the onslaught of destruction?

Wheelers is a very long novel with some serious slow scenes in the beginning. However, once the characters are developed and the story's plot sets forth, the authors do an amazing job at telling a terrifying tale. The action scenes are strong and clever and the dialogue crisp and genuine. The technology is comprehensive and believable, making Wheelers an ultimately exciting novel with plenty of tension and suspense.