Kathy Reichs
Kathy Reichs, author of the bestselling Dr. Temperance Brennan novels, on which the popular TV show Bones is based, has now begun "a thrilling debut series for young adults," starring Victoria (Tory) Brennan, niece of the fictional forensic anthropologist.
Mining the still-rich post-Harry Potter YA market, Virals will no doubt garner a huge crossover following, determined by Reichs's previous books and her TV series. Despite what seems like a calculated move, Virals is actually a pretty good read; in fact, it's much more enjoyable than the sometimes tedious Bones books.
When we first meet our heroine, 14-year-old Tory has moved to Morris Island off the cost of South Carolina after her mother's death, to live with her previously unknown father.
She's going to a new school, and has made friends on the island with the other resident kids her own age, all boys and science geeks like herself.
When animal-lover Tory and her "sci-phile" friends free a dog from a secret lab on another island, they don't realize that they've been infected with an engineered canine virus, which is slowly rewriting their own DNA.
As they discover newfound abilities, they're also caught up in much more sinister goings-on: a decades-old murder that someone will do anything to cover up.
Reichs makes her protagonists engaging and smart, but not so Sherlock-Holmes-know-it-all as to be annoying. There are some minor problems in the narrative, and a few clichés here and there, but nothing too distracting. The novel does begin " in medias res" with a prologue that ends in a cliffhanger showing the kids in peril, and then of course jumps back to the recent past to show how they got there. This device is a bit overused, particularly by thriller writers, but the rest of the book makes up for it.
The teenagers in the story are fairly fully realized, and it's particularly refreshing to see them, despite their giftedness (pre- and post-viral enhancement), behaving like teens and not like miniature adults. Tory, despite her smarts, doesn't clue in to a couple of things that seem obvious to the reader, but this actually lends verisimilitude.
Occasionally the boys that are Tory's friends blur into one another, differentiated solely by physical traits: this one tall, that one chubby, this one dark-haired. But they remain engaging and appropriate foils for Tory, whose voice is strong and memorable. The adults in the novel fare less well, and sometimes seem like stereotypes, but given that this a book about and for teenagers, perhaps it doesn't really matter that everyone over the age of 20 seems to be orbiting at a bit of distance, kind of like the parents in a Charlie Brown TV special.
In fact, that might be more realism on Reichs's part: that all adults are to a great degree incomprehensible people from another planet, as far as kids are concerned.
What does feel vaguely disorienting, though, is the X-Men-ish nature of the virus the protagonists have been infected with, rendering Virals a kind of cross-genre mystery/SF novel. While these elements largely work, one wonders how the book will fare with readers who are expecting a more traditional mystery-cum-thriller. And it's unclear where this series will go; books about mutated teens who solve crimes seem more firmly planted in the SF world than in the whodunit world.
Then again, Michael Crichton, Tess Gerritsen and many others have done very well in the mutant virus subgenre, so no doubt Reichs will too. Or perhaps she has created her own new sub-sub-genre here (YA medical SF mystery thriller?), the way she did with her Temperance Brennan novels.
When the second book in the series comes out, presumably we'll find out what happens to that pesky mutating virus, and how the kids cope with it. In the meantime, there's Virals to amuse ourselves with: a fun, fast read for teens and adults alike, and recommended as an afternoon's nail-biting enjoyment.
Sandra Kasturi is a Toronto writer, editor, poet and publisher. She is the author of The Animal Bridegroom and co-publisher of ChiZine Publications.