Fiction/Sci Fi Review

Chromosome 8
by Peter Holt
ISBN-10: 1596871539
review by Heather Froeschl

It all started with a fish trying to escape the circle of life...evolution. Some scoff, and some say that man is still evolving. Just where will this evolution take us? Perhaps where we do not hope to go. Peter Holt has penned a novel so daring as to examine the possibilities. "Chromosome 8" is by far the best book I have read in a very long time.

Biologist Marcus Oden and geologist Nick Kondos are the entire staff of the Ocean Sciences Institute, a small, grant-run entity that frequents the Pacific performing various sea science missions. It's a living, but it also enables Marcus to continue his search for the wife he lost to these waters. Her tiny sailboat usurped by the vast ocean. An alarming number of vessels have been lost in this far corner of the South Pacific, and in learning of their demise Marcus will also stumble upon things he cannot fathom.

Called to help in the rescue of a small submersible, Marcus and Nick find themselves in a throwback violent culture of Polynesian warriors who are led by the Yale schooled Paramount Chief Pelemodo. This Chief has made great strides to return to the traditional gods and culture of the island, complete with cannibalism. He wants nothing to do with the white men and their ways. Also on the island is Dr. Gastro Nister, a combination Dr. Frankenstien and Einstein whose greatest flaw was loving his daughter too much to let her die. His intervention, a change in her DNA, could be the downfall of human kind as we know it. Katya is every bit as brilliant as her father but fans the flames of an even deeper-seated motivation...to protect and expand her genes at all costs.

The book is akin to "Lord of the Flies," and "Jurassic Park." It is so compelling as to entice the reader to keep turning pages well into the night. I dare say some would call in sick to work to continue reading. The characters are expertly drawn, the setting exquisite (like a Venus Fly Trap), the descriptive writing very well done, but it is the idea of it that is so captivating and the science explained well enough to be believable. "Chromosome 8" is a page turning, nail biter that will leave the reader wondering "what if?" I highly recommend the book to readers of all genres - you will not be disappointed.