The Unborn
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A futuristic mystery from the New York Times Bestselling author of over a dozen books in the DUNE series.
In the summer of 2097, Riggio wakes up with amnesia--and his lover dead in their bed. A knife sticks out of the center of her chest, and her blood stains the sheets of the hotel bed. He doesn't know who did it or why; he has only some vague memories of the attack. He recalls her blood curdling screams, her final gasps, and the terror in her eyes. She had recognized the murderer, no doubt, the man in shadows who had stood over their bed. Riggio tries to place the man and the time of the murder, but the events in his memory are sketches at best. Driving an escape car he doesn't remember acquiring and running from a past he fears, Riggio only knows one thing for sure: Someone is chasing him, and they are getting closer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Herbert (the Dune series) strains believability with this techno-thriller that pits genetically engineered humans against both the law and themselves. In 2097, Riggio Demont is the subject of a secret experiment to create pacified humans, or Homo Pax. When Riggio awakens to a dead body in his bed and no memory of what happened, he flees in the victim's car to its programmed destination. Along the way, he rescues Meredith Lamour, a risk management consultant, from a fire. In gratitude, Meredith offers Riggio a job as her assistant on her upcoming business trip to a moon of Saturn, but Riggio's admiration for Meredith triggers the ire of his embedded genetic "twin," Tatsy, a result of the experiment, who takes over their shared body to complete her latest murder spree. Herbert's nuanced statement about the risks of genetic engineering is undermined by the fantastical abilities he grants to Tatsy, among them telepathy and shape-shifting. Clunky exposition and a strangely conventional vision of the future, in which gender roles and religious views have remained unchanged, will pull readers out of the story. This is a fascinating concept, but poorly executed.
