Saturday, April 17, 2010

Chimera-Rob Thurman

Chimera
Rob Thurman
Roc, Jun 2010, $7.99
ISBN 9780451463425

A decade ago someone kidnapped young Lukas Korsak. The lad just disappeared from sight with no ransom or any demand. His family grieved their loss as the assumption was he was murdered.

Lukas’s older brother Stefan has never forgotten his sibling. Working for the Russian Mafia, he still searches for Lukas when he can. Following a lead, he assaults a top secret human laboratory that brainwashes and genetically modifies kids turning them into lethal assassins. There Stefan finds a teen who looks identically like Lukas adding ten years of maturity to the mental image the mobster has maintained. Freeing the teen, they flee from the facility’s leader who sends a horde of transformed young trained killers after them.

Using technology rather than supernatural as the means of conversion, Rob Thurman provides a strong, faster than a speeding Flash thriller. Intriguing that both brothers are killers; yet the older one trusts their DNA and shared past while the younger sibling distrusts everyone as he has been thoroughly brainwashed so that his instincts are to kill regardless of collateral damage. Readers will relish this tale of brotherly love as Stefan tries to save his brother from what the Madhouse did to him, but soon believes he will be Abel to Lukas’ Cain.

Harriet Klausner

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