A thought-provoking genetics tale hampered by questionable theories.
A horse breeder and a game designer seek genetically engineered babies in this debut novel.
In 2022, Yale roommates Rachael Stein and Debbie Robinson both want medical careers, Rachael as a veterinarian specializing in horses. By 2044, Rachael has achieved success as an IVF horse breeder with a second Kentucky Derby winner to her credit, owned by her closest friends, the wealthy Greg and Alison Davos. Rachael gets a surprise visit from Debbie, who’d lost touch after making a small fortune selling her eggs to a Hong Kong company. She drops a bomb in Rachael’s quiet life with a spree that includes “drugs, gun wounds, rape, and kidnapping.” Reeling from those events and from news of Debbie’s 300 to 600 offspring, Rachael accepts Alison’s offer of a free visit to Better Genetics Corporation and a $2 million full-options package. Housed in a secret Caribbean location, the company is dedicated to ending genetic diseases by providing designer babies to the rich; their slogan is “Only God plays dice. Humans don’t have to.” Meanwhile, in Palo Alto, California, wealthy game designer Max Allerton has given up on finding a decent woman to marry and have children with. As an anonymous online friend warns him, marriage, for men, “gets worse than slavery.” Max, too, makes the trip to Better Genetics, choosing—as nearly everyone does, including Rachael—to have a superintelligent, tall, Greek-skinned, violet-eyed child. Though Max encounters secrets and lies from those around him, he and others, including Rachael, develop novel forms of family life united by their violet-eyed children, who represent the new Genetic Age where all are Prime.
In his series opener, Clark taps into the anxieties and hopes that parents have for their children. His premise is intriguing; readers will likely ask themselves what characteristics they would choose if they could, and why. Also of interest are the novel’s imaginative speculations about future forms of family life, such as four-person marriages. Implausible or questionable elements, though, detract from the story’s effectiveness. Rachael—who believes Debbie “likely had already had sex with some of her own children”—eventually responds to her lurid shenanigans with tender lovemaking as they chant “Circle of Trust. Circle of Kindness” to each other. The story skirts the issue of eugenics by asserting that “there is no racial superiority theory. There’s no government forcing…specific genetic phenotypes on anyone.” Yet nearly every Better Genetics client selects the same, presumably considered superior, observable traits. While the author relies on scientific concepts, he admits in the foreword that “there is not a lot of good data to support my theories.” Some terms, such as “pair-bond depletion,” can’t be found on Google while other evidence sounds like it comes from alt-right discussion forums like Reddit’s The Red Pill or from questionable evolutionary psychology theories. Readers’ satisfaction will likely depend on how well such ideas resonate with them.
A thought-provoking genetics tale hampered by questionable theories.Pub Date: April 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73304-990-0
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Better Publishing Corporation
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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