An intriguing but uneven tale about the dangers of genetic engineering.
A Saudi princess and a novice reporter work to bring down a mad scientist in this techno-thriller.
Dr. Jordan Roberts is a pioneer in the field of genetic editing. She has developed the ability to cure a wide variety of diseases, though the details of her treatment remain a well-kept secret. Jordan travels to Saudi Arabia to pitch her services to up-and-coming governor Prince Faruq. While there, she also meets the prince’s sister, Princess Saleh, who dresses like a man and serves as her brother’s primary bodyguard. Jordan and Saleh quickly become more than simple business associates, but it isn’t long before the princess becomes suspicious of the doctor’s work, which requires the geneticist to travel to remote regions of Afghanistan. When Saleh discovers Jordan’s real project—she is building clone soldiers and selling them to the highest bidder on the international black market—the geneticist assassinates Faruq, making it look like a suicide. Saleh vows to take vengeance, a quest that leads her to Jordan’s native San Francisco. Meanwhile, Price Laurel, a struggling actor from St. Louis, is living out of his van on the streets of San Francisco. In the aftermath of his brother’s death in the Afghanistan War, Price decides to become a freelance reporter. His first big story: a profile of Jordan. Jordan is hoping for good PR surrounding her new operations—she’s attempting to secure funding from the American government—so she agrees to allow Price into her orbit, thinking she can control him. Saleh learns about it and makes her own offer to Price. The two set about to expose Jordan and her unethical cloning operation, but has the doctor become too powerful for anyone to vanquish her?
The ambitious, nearly 500-page work has many captivating plotlines and characters, particularly the mercurial Saleh. Micko also explores some complex, thought-provoking ideas in the narrative, like gender fluidity and cloning, that myriad readers will be interested in. But while the author’s prose has a nice staccato rhythm, it sometimes reads more like a film treatment than a novel. Furthermore, the style is often too clunky to achieve the tone Micko desires. Price is supposed to read as naïve, but he frequently comes across as an idiot: “One thing runs through his mind: clones. If Jordan is creating clones, then that is illegal. Especially if she’s making them for mass production. There’s got to be a law against that, somewhere. Also, it’s unethical. If Jordan successfully cloned a human being and then terminated said human being, then that constitutes murder. However, is the clone considered a human being?” Some of the other characters don’t fare much better. Few are fully convincing in the roles they occupy. Along the way, several of them speak and act like high school students pretending to be Bond villains. Although the plot boldly tackles some rich concepts and issues and delivers bits of humor, it can sometimes become convoluted and lose momentum.
An intriguing but uneven tale about the dangers of genetic engineering.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-54-946124-6
Page Count: 469
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
