[amazon_link id=”0316128155″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Title : Exogene
Author : T.C. McCarthy
Genre : War/Sci-fi
Publisher : Hachette
Pages : 401
Source : Publisher/NetGalley ARC
Rating : 4/5

I elected to read this book because I thought it sci-fi. And while there is sci-fi, Exogene reads more like a war novel. It is set in the future where many countries are engaged in war and have started to use genetically modified soldiers to defend the most difficult terrains. The American forces have garrisons of such soldiers – all female and all bred in labs to come to life at age 15 – full-grown and fighting fit. Then they are kept in monastic surroundings and indoctrinated in the ways of war.

“Rejoice, for you are His daughters and ours, a holy Germline, Germline-one-A, and you will bring to Him eternal glory through death and with sacrifice. So sayeth the Modern Combat Manual.”

For these “genetics”, war is life, and killing the enemy is glory; they can perceive nothing else. After their “useful” life is over at age 18, they are shot.

Catherine “Little Murderer” is one such soldier fighting the war in a pack of her sisters. They are called GermLine 1, and are all lead by their “Lily”, Megan – a strong leader and Catherine’s good friend. As the fighting continues, Catherine can feel her “spoiling” begin – she hallucinates, gets jittery and nervous and begins to doubt her purpose in life. Though, in their prime these soldiers have great strength, and can block pain at will, they have been warned about the “spoiling”, a process which can impede their physical capabilities and which precedes the end of their “useful” life.

When Catherine’s unit is taken by surprise and almost destroyed, she and Megan manage to get away and turn awol. Their goal is to reach Thailand, where other genetic soldiers, gone awol like them, have formed a camp of their own, and have relative freedom. The journey is not easy. They must dodge the enemy, and their own army which has sent out drones to find and kill them.

I probably wouldn’t have picked this up had I realized that this was a war novel. But am I glad I did. Yes, it is brutal, and sometimes pedantic in its descriptions, but the descriptions are detailed. The futuristic landscape, much of it irradiated seems to come to life in T. C. McCarthy’s words.  There are a lot of details on war maneuvers, “plasma” weapons, “tracer flechettes”, APCs and grenade launchers.

We hear of the story in the first person; Catherine is the narrator. And through her voice, and it is a voice filled with doubt, we glimpse humanity. For all her killer instinct and cold reasoning, Catherine is a heroine we can empathize with. Not having any sense of normalcy besides the normalcy of war, she still begins to doubt the “rightness” of unceasing war, weighing the “good” and the “evil” in her heavily indoctrinated and medicinally dosed mind.

I thought McCarthy’s idea novel, and the book itself (which is the second of “The Subterrene War” series, I find out now) an ode to humanity’s incessant greed and corruption. While on the face of it, this is a war novel, this also probes beneath the surface to raise questions about the relative nature of right and wrong. Well-written, this is an engrossing, thought-provoking read. Recommended.