This combination of the ideas in Bladerunner, military fiction and genetic engineering science fiction book is a fast paced look at a future war in which many of the combatants are genetically created humans. McCarthy's main characters are Catherine, Megan and Margaret.

Catherine and Megan are genetics decanted from the Atelier at 15 as soldiers in a global war. As part of the training, the genetics receive a constant indoctrination about God, Faith and killing. They are trained to not be squeamish at all and its part of this indoctrination that they believe that if they die they just meet God. So the young girls all believe that killing is good because they just meet God that much faster, and they have an amoral attitude about killing and life in general. They are armed with a perfect killing gun, a carbine that shoots small flechettes, hundreds in a clip.

Mostly they fight in Russia against Russian soldiers and genetics to find energy in Russia. Megan is a Lily, the leader of a group of genetics. There is a small computer embedded in her brain that helps her with her mission. Catherine is her right hand killer. A lethal killer. Like Bladerunner, the genetics have a kind of programmed shelf life. If they are not killed in combat, their bodies and minds go through a spoiling process -- their minds go through hallucinations while their bodies start to rot and get affected by gangrene, and they are hunted by humans who seek to kill them.

The novel is told in a series of flashbacks to the early days in combat and then jump aheads to the present. Catherine and Megan are primo genetics. They have survived everything the horrendous war has thrown at them. Catherine especially is a ferocious killer, who has earned the sobriquet -- the Little Murderer.

Also Catherine has had some genetic modified chemicals used on her to see if the scientists can learn why she is so lethal at her job.

Catherine has started to lose her mind to hallucinations and takes massive amounts of trank pills just to hold it together.

Neither Megan nor Catherine want to die from the spoiling or the Americans so they choose to run and try to escape to Thailand where supposedly other escapees are living.

At some point Cahterine gets help from Russian scientists who help her stop the gangrene, attach prosthetics to her limbs and make her work in a factory with second generation female genetics. But it appears that Catherine is still wanted by others or that the Russians may want to turn her into a machine man mold, so she and a fellow prisoner, Margaret, try to escape from Russia and begin a run across Russia, through China and Korea. Betrayed constantly, Catherine must battle through her deteriorating mind and all of the humans who want to sell her or Margaret or both, until she can figure out how to live on her own. Still a lethal warrior, but more and more reluctant to kill unless she has too or because the hallucinations inhibit her.

The book is fast paced and furious. The treatment of the genetics and the warfare in the future is brutally imagined and perfectly told.

Not for the faint, Catherine's story is interesting and fresh take on war in the future.