PREDATOR/NOMAD

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.