The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid

Publication Date: November 1, 2016

Series: STANDALONE

Genera(s): Dystopian Sci-fi/Space Opera

Subjects: space colonies, genetic modification, bodyguards, impersonation, royalty

Setting: In space, spaceships and space colonies

POV/Tense: 1^st person, past tense: Nemesis dan Impyrean

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 403 pgs. (In ARC version, at least)

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: Simon & Schuster: BFYR

Summary/ product description: “Red Queen meets The Hunger Games in this epic novel about what happens when the galaxy’s most deadly weapon masquerades as a senator’s daughter and a hostage of the galactic court.

A Diabolic is ruthless. A Diabolic is powerful. A Diabolic has a single task: Kill in order to protect the person you’ve been created for.

Nemesis is a Diabolic, a humanoid teenager created to protect a galactic senator’s daughter, Sidonia. The two have grown up side by side, but are in no way sisters. Nemesis is expected to give her life for Sidonia, and she would do so gladly. She would also take as many lives as necessary to keep Sidonia safe.

When the power-mad Emperor learns Sidonia’s father is participating in a rebellion, he summons Sidonia to the Galactic court. She is to serve as a hostage. Now, there is only one way for Nemesis to protect Sidonia. She must become her. Nemesis travels to the court disguised as Sidonia—a killing machine masquerading in a world of corrupt politicians and two-faced senators’ children. It’s a nest of vipers with threats on every side, but Nemesis must keep her true abilities a secret or risk everything.

As the Empire begins to fracture and rebellion looms closer, Nemesis learns there is something more to her than just deadly force. She finds a humanity truer than what she encounters from most humans. Amidst all the danger, action, and intrigue, her humanity just might be the thing that saves her life—and the empire.”

My Review:  I’ve had the great pleasure of reading an advance copy of this, provided by Anderson’s Bookshop and Bookfair in Naperville, Illinois. They have a pre-pub event August 22 that I had wanted to attend, but have class that night. The author will be there to sign ARCs and there will be food. If you live in Chicagoland and are interested, please contact them and pick up you ARC. Seeing as this book has not yet been released and won’t be until November first, I won’t spoil anything major, but I’ll tell you about it the best I can.

The Diabolic is a sci-fi story that takes place in space. It’s part dystopian, part space opera. Nemesis is a Diabolic, which is a genetically engineered bodyguard that is bonded to one person, and seeks to protect only that person, even if it means harming the people that person care about. Nemesis belongs to Sidonia Impyrean, the daughter of a galactic Senator.

Sidonia is summoned by the Emperor to the Chrysanthemum, the space colony where the royal court is located. Sidonia’s mother decides to have Nemesis go in her steed. Nemesis is taught etiquette and under goes genetic modifications to her appearance and to make her body seem more average in size and strength so she won’t be discovered to be a Diabolic. 

When Nemesis gets to court, she discovers that playing a Senatorial heir might be harder than she thought. She might have to take extreme measure to keep her secret and to protect the Impyrean family. She soons discovers that in the royal court, there’s always some plot, scandal or assassination attempt in the works and it’s best to trust no one.

The Emperor has three of his own Diabolics, even though they were outlawed everywhere else, and knowledge Nemesis’s mere existence could cause the execution of the Impyreans for treason. She thinks his Diabolics might be on to her. On top on that, the emperor’s nephew and heir Tyrus seems to be taking notice of her, and if rumors are true, then he’s insane, but maybe there’s something cleverer about him that she thinks.

The characters of this book are pretty interesting. Nemesis is very different from other YA heroines. She was meant to be a bodyguard and not care about her own well-being. She’s like Rose from Vampire Academy, but with the selflessness of Tris from Divergent. Sidonia is like Lissa from Vampire Academy, then. Tyrus reminds me of Nikolai from the Grisha series, though I won’t tell you why, except for some of the narcissistic and ego-related humor. Some of the characters annoyed me because they talked overly formally, like they’re from Elizabethan times to something. Some were so shallow and back-stabbing.

I thought the sci-fi stuff and technology was cool, except for the genetically modified “creatures” or “humanoids.” Nemesis is not considered humor because she was engineered. She’s very strong and fast, but they didn’t give her tear ducts, so she can’t cry. She denies that she feels thing like other people. She can kill without remorse. It’s likely because she was nurtured to kill and not part of her nature like she had believed. There are Exalted, which are hairless innocents grown and cared for during a holiday week only to be sent into a star to die. There are Harmonoids, engineered only to play music. There are Servitors who are only meant to serve and have no free will.

The cool technology includes machines that can change you appearance easily with genetic alteration. You can have any hair color, eye color, skin color, facial feature or even change your sex. There are hair stilts, which can hold you hair in any style you please. There’s also artificial youth so older folks can look young again. There are medbots to heal you.

On the uncool side of things, there are drugs, like opioid rubs, narcotics and inhaled euphorics, and they’re all legal in the empire and they use the med bots to fix any problem that occur from them. There’s also the Helionic religion, in which the worship the Living Cosmos and view any pursuit of science or mathematics as heresy.

I recommend this to those who enjoyed The Jewel by Amy Ewing, Red Queen by Victoria Avyard, any book set in space, or book about a royal court. There is a kind of Capital-esque feel to the court, so I even recommend it to Hunger Games fans.

Cover Art Review: One of the most gorgeous cover’s I’ve seen! I love butterflies. This is one beautiful yet deadly butterfly. It’s very metaphorical. I love that the knives and the title are metallic. This cover is pretty symmetrical and simple, like Red Queen’s cover.

Vitro by Jessica Khoury

Series: Corpus (bk. 2)

Genera(s): Sci-fi/Romance

Subjects: experiments, scientists, islands, mystery

Setting: On an island in the south Pacific, called Skin Island, near Guam

POV/Tense: 3^rd person POV: Sophie, Jim, and Lux

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 360 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover/Paperback

Publisher: Penguin: Razorbill

Summary/ product description: “On Skin Island, even the laws of creation can be broken.

On a remote island in the Pacific, Corpus scientists have taken test tube embryos and given them life. These beings—the Vitros—have knowledge and abilities most humans can only dream of. But they also have one enormous flaw.

Sophie Crue is determined to get to Skin Island and find her mother, a scientist who left Sophie behind years ago. With the help of Jim Julien, a young charter pilot, she arrives--and discovers a terrifying secret she never imagined: she has a Vitro twin, Lux, who is the culmination of Corpus's dangerous research.

Now Sophie is torn between reuniting with the mother who betrayed her and protecting the genetically enhanced twin she never knew existed. But untangling the twisted strands of these relationships will have to wait, for Sophie and Jim are about to find out what happens when science stretches too far beyond its reach.”

My Review: This book, Vitro, take place at the same time as or a few days before the event of Origin, but on an island in the South Pacific rather than the Amazon Rainforest. It’s yet another unique sci-fi story that deals with the morality of science. It’s not about cloning like I first thought. It’s about in-vitro fertilization and a chip that can control these Vitros. The chips cause them to imprint on the first person they see when they are born/awaken.

Sophie came to Skin Island (a fictional island near Guam) because of an email sent by her mother. She’s taken there by Jim, a childhood friend who’s now a pilot and flies tourists. What’s happening on Skin Island is not what Sophie first believed. She see Lux, her secret twin who’s a Vitro. And she is mistaken for her. Jim thinks Lux is Sophie and rescues her and thing keep getting worse, more crazy and complicated.

This book is actually kind of fun too. It’s funny and light, though the horrible science it deals with is not. There’s romance and humor, and a lot of science. It definitely keeps in tone with Origin, but it’s written in 3^rd person POV, rotating between Sophie, Jim and Lux. Origin was 1^st person POV, and only Pia. The only character that is in both books is Strauss. Victoria Strauss is a nasty lady who’s a big part of Corpus, a scientific research organization with projects all over the world. She cares more about profit than anything and inherited the job from her father. She’s seems like Divergent’s Jeanine from Erudite.

I’d recommend this book to fans of Unremembered, Maximum Ride, Altered by Jennifer Rush, The Rules by Stacy Kade and other books with genetic engineering and mad science. Also, if you like tropical island settings like in Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse, or Catching Fire, then you’ll love this.

Cover Art Review: I love the cover. The test tube with the island is a very cool illustration. Almost minimal.

Here's the paperback cover. Not as cool.

Origin by Jessica Khoury

Publication Date: Sept 4, 2012 (and I’ve finally read it!)

Series: Corpus (bk. 1)

Genera(s): Sci-fi/Romance

Subjects: experiments, genetic engineering, immortality, rainforests,

Setting: In the Amazon Rainforest in a facility called Little Cam

POV/Tense: 1^st person, present tense: Pia

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 394 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover/Paperback

Publisher: Penguin: Razorbill

Summary/ product description: “Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home―and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin―a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.

My Review:  Almost three years since this book has come out and it’s been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. Maybe I would have read it sooner if I got it from the library instead of buying it. Anyways, I’m glad I read it. It’s a very unique book. It’s set in the Amazon Rainforest on a medical research facility called Little Cam. It’s a secret place because it’s where Pia was made. She’s the first immortal, and the only one.

The love interest of Pia is a boy named Eio. His father is a scientist at Little Cam, but his mother was a native. He was raised by the native, though he looks different from them. Pia meets him when she finds a hole in the fence that keeps her out of the jungle and finally goes into the jungle. Eio seems charming and sweet and even has a sense of humor. He’s kind of like Tarzan, but not completely wild. He’s pretty smart because his father taught him English and about the world. Pia’s been sheltered and doesn’t know anything about the world outside Little Cam.

Pia reminds me of Seraphina from the Unremembered series by Jessica Brody. She’s has a photographic memory, enhance reflexes and speed, but not much upper-body strength. She cannot be cut open, shot or impaled in anyway. She indestructible, but still feels pain. She was born, not created in a lab. The deadly nector of a flower was combined with something and then injected into her ancestors over 5 generation to make Pia an immortal. It’s a really interesting sci-fi idea. I’d recommend this book to fans of Unremembered, Maximum Ride, Altered by Jennifer Rush, The Rules by Stacy Kade and other books with genetic engineering and mad science.

Cover Art Review: I love the cover. The rainforest texture is pretty and the flower and the outline with the title.