Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.
Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.
The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer’s cold logic.
Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.
Genetically engineered monsters fighting to the death! A killing machine that is far more intelligent than anyone ever could have guessed!!! A book like this literally demands a cover full of monsters fighting to the death for the pleasure of bloodthirsty humans... shouldn't it?
Check out the cover...
In my opinion, the cover is just bland but the blurb is atrocious. As a molecular biologist and geneticist, when I read that "no human DNA allowed in the designs" etc, I cringed. Scientifically speaking, this basic plot point is so ridiculous that I don't think I could read even a few pages of this book.
ReplyDeleteEh, it looks just fine. It would have been awesome to see more stuff, but then I think back to the covers for Sam Sykes's books and all of a sudden this looks like a masterpiece (and I love the covers that pyr puts out). So its more of a love it or hate it sort of thing and I just think it's decent.
ReplyDeleteThat is a huge missed opportunity. I would have gone with a part of a monster, like an arm, or a wicked looking hand. Something that hints at the creature without revealing it. Something that makes you curious. This is a cover I'd pass without even thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an awesome book, but I agree the cover is a let down. You should do a giveaway so I can win a copy.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the Frankenstein Monster for the 21st Century to me.
ReplyDeleteActually, it looks like the close up of a leg with a torn fishnet stocking and a blood spot on the leg. This cover doesn't work at all at conveying its point.
ReplyDeleteI like the font they've used but the trouble with the cover is that it doesn't give any idea of what's inside. I know the blurb does this, but it's the cover that normally makes me look at the blurb. This doesn't even pin down the genre for me.
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