The Cambridge Geek

The Titan Strain - Virginia Soenksen

Liane is an Agent, trained from childhood to act as the perfect killer for the Agency, the operational wing of the shadowy, fascistic, Libertas party, the only government that exists in a future Britain, ravaged by World War 3.

London is a divided city, with the Party controlling the wealth and safety, and the "mods" living on the fringes, surviving on scraps. Mods are the result of an attempt to genetically engineer humans through drugs, now available on the black market, giving them various animal traits. The wolf mods, with whom Liane is most friendly, think she's one of them, though really she knows she's something else entirely, able to out-run, out-think and out-fight any mod she's ever met.

She's not happy in her life of government-sanctioned murder, but it's all she's ever known, and her relationship with her handler, Damian, is the only real human interaction in her life. Until she rescues Seth, a police officer who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and finds herself with an unexpected friend.

Now she must balance her desire for freedom with her loyalty to her oldest companion and the group that saved her from an orphanage, while investigating the deaths of several mods and discovering what their deaths have to do with the Titan Strain of the title.

Good things first. This has a lot of cool ideas. I enjoy a dystopia, and the basic premise of this one is rather neat. In today's world, a fascist British government feels very timely, and I'm expecting we'll see a few more of them. I'm also intrigued by the genetic modding. It's getting closer and closer (looking at you CRISPR), and the ability to make people better at a particular occupation has a lot of potential for abuse and therefore terrible situations.

I enjoyed Liane and Seth's friendship. It's refreshing to not see an urban fantasy jump straight to the romance, and I'd love to see these two stay platonic, but watching out for each other's backs. Seth was also a nice balance to the ascetic Liane, and the book gave more of a view than we usually get into the background lives of "supporting" cast, particularly through a stalkery eye.

And the slightly creepy nature of the Agency and the world in which it lived is rather fun. I always enjoy a Machiavellian organisation and the elaborate plots they tend to be involved in, and this was good for that.

The major downside of the book however is that even though it has a really solid base of interesting ideas, it doesn't do enough with them. The book runs as a thriller. Towards the end of the book, the action doesn't stop, with exciting scenes and gun fights galore, and an impressive climax. Unfortunately, how it gets there feels very shallow. There's a certain reveal you'll see coming about a third of the way through the book, and how things progress from there follow a path you'll likely be able to work out in advance.

That wouldn't be a problem if the journey in general was enticing enough, but I found I was not too worried about getting there (would put it down and not come back to it for a couple of days). Hard to gauge the length of a book when you're reading it electronically, but my guess is it's a little too short. Certain sections read like an outline, rather than a fully fledged story, so the very promising plot was prevented from fully blooming by the paucity of detail. This needed a grimier world that I could taste, and it didn't quite give me that.

It's the first in a series, and a debut novel, and shows promise for later installments. I'll likely take a look at the next one, because the improvements that come with a developing author should sneak it further up the recommendability scale.

Score:
Score 3

Tagged: Book Science fiction Techno-thriller Novel Print Netgalley