Gene Cards

Skyler Donohue #1

by E.E. Giorgi

When the cure for some means death for others, how far will you go to save your own?

Yulia Szymanski is a murderer and one of the best hackers of the century. Her mission: break her brother out of a high security jail before he dies of a rare genetic condition. On her trail is Biothreat Agent Skyler Donohue, a decorated Muay Thai fighter with a strange fascination for corpses. The obstacle to overcome: an invisible, deadly disease that strikes at random and has the city of Liasis locked in a bioterrorism siege.

When the latest to fall ill is Skyler's best friend's daughter, Skyler wants to drop the Szymanski case to chase the baffling pathogen that nobody is able to isolate. What she doesn't know is that finding Yulia is the only way to stop the epidemic and save the child's life.

In a world where identities are based on gene cards, and privacy no longer exists, survival is only granted to the rich, the healthy, and those who've learned to become invisible to the system.

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopia

410 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

About the author

E.E. Giorgi is a scientist, an award winning author, and a IPA awarded photographer. She spends her days analyzing genetic data, her evenings chasing sunsets, and her nights pretending she's somebody else. Sign up for my newsletter here.

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Reviews

[Marika Charalambous · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars review at http://mysterysequels.com/gene-cards-...

Gene Cards is the first book in a new series by the author E. E. Giorgi, best known for her Track Presius mystery series. Her new series is labeled dystopian in genre, however having read it, I think it’s a complex futuristic techno-thriller at heart.

The story is set in the near future in the year 2056, in a time when human genes play the crucial role in defining who a person is, and as a consequence in splitting the world in two: those who have healthy gene are living a ‘normal’ life in an enclosed city, whereas the unlucky ones are outcasts from the society with no job, medical health or any sort positive outlook on life. They can’t even enter the protected city at all.

The main character, Skyler Donohue is detective focusing on bio-threats and related criminal activities. Her latest case: find a well known hacker, Yulia Szymanski, who has just killed her latest boyfriend. Yulia is almost a genius. She manipulates genes, changes her own DNA to become somebody else every time she feels close to being discovered. And somehow she entered the city, which is a big no-no for DNA unfits like her kind.

The story is very well written, and the fact that it’s a futuristic techno-thriller, made me like it even more (I love this genre). I do find the fact that it’s labeled a dystopian novel confusing, because it is anything but. Sure, the setting sounds dystopian (city of healthy vs outcasts, etc), however Skyler is not fighting the system as the main hero or heroine do in the usual dystopian novels. She embraces it and uses it to her advantage to find the criminals.

Overall I can heartily recommend this book to any crime, mystery, suspense, futuristic, techno-thrillers and dystopian fiction lovers alike. Yes, indeed, it is quite a complex book that can be included in any of these genres with ease.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biothreat agent Skyler Donohue needs to find two needles in haystacks: one is the brilliant criminal hacker Yulia Szymanski, and the other is the root of a mysterious disease that takes down victims rapidly and unpredictably. Yulia, meanwhile, is working to help her brother Julian escape from prison before he dies of a genetic disorder. The story is set in the future city of Liasis, which comes to life almost as a character itself, with vividly imagined cultures, weather patterns, and technology. One of my favorite things about this book was how both Skyler and Yulia engaged my curiosity and empathy. Skyler is impulsive and fiery while Yulia is more elusive and calculating, but they match each other's quick thinking and tenacity. It makes for a tense, intriguing, evenly-matched conflict. The narrative weaves back and forth between them, leading up to a final twist that I did not see coming.

However, I found that Julian's interludes felt more like speedbumps. Although his point of view is unique - strongly sensory yet eerily severed from reality - it was comparatively difficult to become interested in his personality and intellect. I also felt that at times the story slowed down as it detailed objects and settings, or delved into the emotional states of characters. I think that sometimes, less can be more.

Overall though, I found this to be a great read. As always, E.E. Giorgi combines science fiction with crime and mystery in a way that feels natural and exciting, and keeps the reader guessing about what's coming next. It's clear that a great deal of research went into creating the story and the world that it unfolds in. This book will keep you on the edge of your seat, and you might learn some really interesting science along the way.

[ARC received in exchange for an honest review.]

[LordTBR · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading "Apocalypse Weird: Immunity" by Giorgi, I decided that I HAD to read more of her works. I chose 'Gene Cards' and, suffice it to say, it was a fantastic choice. From page one, this book will have you hooked and Giorgi won't apologize if you lose sleep over it. Skylar Donohue, a Biothreat Agent, is tasked with hunting down a notoriously talented hacker (oh, and murderer) named Yulia Szymanski, while an unknown toxin is beginning to infect a small quantity of people in the city of Liasis. All the while, Yulia is trying to find a way to break her brother out of high security prison and give him a shot at life before he dies of a rare genetic condition. Skylar must fight through the end of a romantic relationship, the deterioration of Liasis, unbelief from her superiors in regards to her theories, a hacker who can assume a different identity by a flip of a switch and a new love interest in order to stop an epidemic from taking over the city.

Giorgi does a wonderful job meshing different genres (science fiction, mystery, crime, romance) in a way that would appeal to all sorts of readers. She also uses exact science in all of her work which can be terrifying if you actually look out our world today. Gene Cards is also a different type of read as it features both a female protagonist and antagonist, something that I have never seen before but thoroughly enjoyed. I highly recommend that you pick up Gene Cards if you enjoy a thrilling, non-stop read with highly developed characters and an entirely plausible plot.

[Juneta Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of the Ms. Giorgi Track Presius Mystery series. I signed up on Ms. Giorgi's blog for an ARC copy of this book in her new sci-fi thriller series for an honest review. Ms. Giorgi has a very unique voice, a word artist, with a vivid and descriptive vocabulary.

Gene Card is an elaborate world of advance science and technology, in a world that could very easily implode on itself. It is a world on the verge of environmental destruction. What is the truth and which is the lie? The world has been carefully orchestrated over time where those who have the right genes thrive, while those who don't fall through the cracks or are allowed to die.

A bio threat threatens life as the people of that world know it. Time is running out. Skylar Donohue is a detective on the bio threat squad and she needs to discover the secrets hidden in the lies and deceptions of the very government and organization she works for, before those she cares about die and the world as they know is changed forever. A very satisfying ending.

[Carol Kean · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATED review of a great women-in-science novel: Yulia, the world's greatest hacker, and her brother Julian are two marvelous protagonists. Their father trained them well for the day when the world wide web, or Q-net, became the most relied-upon and most invasive aspect of human life. The fastest, most secure Internet ever built was also truly "safe," so everyone logged on, ran transactions, controlled their homes and their self-driving cars, and bought, sold and bartered, all via billions of bytes per second. "Everything happened over the QNet and *because of* the QNet. Nobody existed outside of it. It owned every movement, every byte, every person." Except one: Yulia Szymanski.

Born genetically imperfect, an "Unfit," Yulia masters DNA hacking. Her brother is dying in prison, and only she can tinker with the genome to get him cured and get him out of the highest-security prison on earth.

Complicating Yulia's mission are the authorities closing in on her. One agent has the brains and brawn to find Yulia in the labyrinth of codes in a computer system, and Skyler Donohue lets nothing stand in her way. Not her boss's anti-gay prejudice, not the murder of her best sources, not --oops, one thing does get in her way: a mysterious illness (no, not Ebola) is killing people in a gruesome manner, and her bigot of a boss tells her to stay off the case. Even the world's best forensics doctor, an Unfit who slipped through the cracks, a dwarf (disliked by everyone except Skyler and a new coworker named Kim), has not found the cause, much less the cure. Skyler has to sneak around to collect clues and visit the secret basement lab of the "Unfit" but brilliant doctor.

Other reviewers have already summarized the plot, so I won't repeat it here. I was planning to review this book in greater detail in Perihelion Science Fiction ezine, but now that I started talking about it, I can't stop. (UPDATE: I did review this in the December 2014 issue of Perihelion.)

The sheer brain power of Skyler, Yulia and Julian kept me turning pages. The premise itself, not so much. The setting of this futuristic story is an earth ruined by human activity. Not surprisingly, genetically modified food is one of the culprits. Tam Linsey tackles this subject in her "Botanicaust" series, and so do countless other authors drawn to dystopian themes and the dangers of GMOs.

Some of the minor characters are marvelous, especially Peter. The bread-baking granddaughter has the potential to bring down the house with her performance, but somehow, it's a single cat that steals the show (for me, anyway) at the very end.

I keep meaning to surf the internet for case studies mentioned in the story, especially the oligonucleotides that penetrate skin and... well, I won't say what else they can do.

Oh, and those antiquated rolls of 35-mm film? Yulia finds uses for them that stagger the imagination.

E.E. Giorgi is an accomplished scientist who also has a gift for spinning a suspenseful story. Anyone squeamish about profanity or lesbians, please just don't buy the book only to go one-starring it because it isn't your cup of tea. I've seen far too much of this, especially when indie authors offer their novels for free or for a price so low it wouldn't even get you a cup of tea or coffee. Some readers seem to make a career of snapping up indie novels just to show off their skill at sneering like mean girls who lack the brains to write their own novels.

The novel has its flaws, and I debated four versus five stars. The syntax is jarringly odd at times, some typos slip through, but - Update #2 - I emailed the author and she's made revisions. Oh, and she was born and raised in Tuscany, Italy, so if her English idioms sound a little "off" to my Midwestern ear, she has a good excuse. (All you other indie authors out there just needed better high school English teachers, or a greater incentive to care, once auto-correct and spell-check hijacked our writing skills.)

Skyler isn't my favorite heroine of all time, but she grew on me, especially with her love of jazz, coffee and German-built cars.

I get annoyed at the way GMOs and corporations are so stupendously evil in so much of today's fiction.

Most of all, I'm not impressed with the bad guys. Yulia is a marvelous villain; even if she's a murderer, we don't want her to get caught. Julian is a little harder to get to know, spending most of the novel in a state of pain and suffering. It's hard to see him as a villain at all. The other villains are just too easy to hate, but if they all had redeeming virtues, we'd feel a little uncomfortable when they're brought down. Much as I hate smarmy, evil villains, real life is full of them, and I can't fault an author for reminding me of that sad fact.

But then there's the city itself, its dazzling technology (food printers! self-washing dishes! implants that remind us of things and impart information!), and those colossal silos beneath the city, installed to catch flood water (and floods will come, routinely).

In all, I love the story for the intelligent women and the science. Yes, there are things I didn't love about the novel, but in all, this is a story too good to be missed.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your genetics load the gun. Your lifestyle pulls the trigger. - Mehmet Oz

The year is 2056. The world is deteriorating rapidly because of droughts, floods, fires, and Big Brother really is watching.

Skyler Donohue is an FBI agent, Biothreat Division, and she tells her story, as do Julian and Yulia Szymanski, brother and sister in this grim dystopian tale. Julian is slowly dying in prison and Yulia, notorious hacker/scientist works to get him out.

Meanwhile, an Outbreak Response and Bioterrorism Investigation has been opened to look into the deadly outbreak of XP5H, an unknown pathogen killing people in the city of Liasis.

Everyone's DNA has been collected and typed for over 20 years now and anyone who has genetic abnormalities is considered Unfit and banned from the cities.
Genetically modified foods are the norm.

Author Giorgi is a scientist in real life and it shows in this story of a grim future. The science makes sense and, thus, is that much scarier.

I loved the characters, especially the two main females of the story - protagonist and antagonist. They were well described and it was actually difficult to decide who was the good guy/bad guy at times.

As far as the story goes, I enjoyed this "look" at the future. I actually think we are going to see many more changes over the next 40 years than are described in GENE CARDS, especially as pertains to technology. But I still appreciated this author's ideas of what might be.

[Christoph Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Gene Cards” by E.E. Giorgi is a dystopian futuristic thriller with a great plot, excellent characters and suspense.
Told in chapters focusing on different characters the book instilled an immediate sense of closeness to the characters. First we meet Yulia Szymanski in an action packed opening sequence but she is not the heroine of the book per se. Next chapter, we meet her brother Julian, in a high security jail and with a rare genetic condition.
Only then do we meet Biothreat Agent Skyler Donohue, a particularly interesting character and the ultimate heroine of the book.
The futuristic setting impressed me particularly as genetic engineering is no longer an implausible ploy for a plot and Giorgi’s background as scientist clearly shows with competently written passages that lend the story credibility and power.
Our world as it might be is written with a solid basis in science and – unfortunately – reality. Giorgi plays with established and some new ideas, creative and original, and that brought some worrying and interesting thoughts to my mind.
A fascinating setting, a tight action packed plot, good drama and excellent female lead characters with bite, inner conflicts and great personal backgrounds make this a gripping and hugely enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

[Cindy Amrhein]

I never quite know as a beta reader if it's appropriate to leave a review on Goodreads. Obviously I like the author's work or I wouldn't beta read for her. Because of that though I'll leave off the official star rating above so it doesn't appear I'm trying to stack the algorithm deck, and just say I'd give it a 5.:)

You can't ask for more in a thriller about genetics than one written by a DNA scientist. The way it was woven together, it kept me guessing who the real bad guy was in an imperfect world. To tell you who I ultimately routed for would spoil the story, and honestly, like real life, there was gray area as far as the characters, not an obvious he/she is the bad guy. I liked that. It kept me guessing. Action packed, yes, but the whole genetics thing really makes one wonder what is possible, it makes for some scary realistic sci-fi. I really enjoyed beta reading this one. Because Elena is a scientist this story, like her Chimeras series, focuses on some quirks in DNA. The difference is Gene Cards is more sci-fi futuristic. I think she handled the genre change from her modern day detective books equally as well.

[Sunshine Somerville · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot.

A strong female lead seems a given these days, but they often are not as complex as Skyler. And having female roles for both the main "good guy" and "bad guy" is rarely as well done as it is here... to the point that I can't think of another example. I always prefer stories that focus on characters over plot, and the main characters here certainly are interesting, relatable, and you grow to care about what happens to them - on both sides of the law.

The Sci-Fi elements feel very plausible for a not-so-distant future. People are attached to their personal devices. The environment is apparently deteriorating. Technology intrudes on every aspect of daily activities. And the SCIENCE in this book is amazing - clearly the author has knowledge in the arenas tackled here. Sometimes the lingo can be a bit much, but it fits with the futuristic world and you can just go along for the ride.

There's a lot of good, visual description in the book, and you can easily see this being a movie. It felt like a crime mystery like "The Fugitive" meets a high-tech conspiracy like "Minority Report," or at least that's the tone I felt.

Highly recommended.

[Michael Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first book by E.E Giorgi and I am happy to say it will not be my last. Gene Cards delivers a smart futuristic thriller that ticks all the right boxes.

The world created by the author is a frightening amalgamation of global warming and science gone mad. We are immersed into this world with a combination of good character and story development. This is a story that is well thought and this shows in throughout the development of the plot. What I loved about this read was that the futuristic components were not that much of a stretch of one’s imagination. This lends to a more realistic feel to the plot.

Gene Cards will have you hooked to the end. I look forward to the delving back into this dystopian world soon.

[Cmoore · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have this book in your hands, you're in for a treat!

Gene Cards is a dystopian medical thriller. Set in So Cal in the not too distant future... If your Genetic profile is clean (with no genetic disorders) you get a free pass and societal acceptance, a Gene Card. The others become outcasts. Skylar, FBI Biothreat division has her work cut out in this book. Her assignment is to track down Yulia a known murderer and Gene Hacker. And, on her own time she is also trying to puzzle out what is causing an unknown contagion.

Go get this book and once you finish, get the rest of E.E. Giorgi's books...

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Detailed, nuanced, with Real Live Honest science in the fiction. The really scary part is that any of these dystopian premises could well become a reality. The characters are compelling, the story-writing tight, the dialogue stellar, and the conclusion will surprise you and make you realize you might have missed a few clues along the way.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another great book that we would have missed in the bookstore/library. Depressing, yet eerily possibly, future. A few twists and turns and one that we only caught as the book revealed it. Superb writing!

We received this book for free via Goodreads First Reads.

[Shyne Guan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read the excerpt and it's really nice
I wished I can read the whole book
I highly recommend this book :D

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giorgi is an incredibly skilled writer. I don't think it's a mistake that the main character, Biothreat Agent, Skyler Donohue, is tough to like. For me, that made the book even more believable. She isn't a cookie-cutter type character. She's strong. She's tough. She's intelligent, and she has no time for b.s. And when Giorgi feeds the reader tidbits of her past, or gives the reader a glimpse into her vulnerability, it's interesting. We all want to fix what's wrong. And Skyler is a damaged soul.

Giorgi's writing is smart. The author is a scientist, and she brings real science-- along with plausible theories to her stories. This one is no different. She paints a future that I'll be glad to not live long enough to see.

The criminal Skyler is chasing, Yulia Szymanski (<--- how's that for a realistic name?!) is a dichotomy of existence. Cold blooded killer we can't relate, and sister and daughter that have fleeting moments of plain old normal. She's also smart, tough, and strong.

I like that Giorgi writes such great female characters.

Without giving away too much, a plot twist ultimately turns both of them toward the same effort; there is a common enemy.

I'd read another in this series.

[Saoirse Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

sci-fi readers are you ready?! First off: pay attention, it really will get you ahead. I had some troubles at first with the story, I felt lost (as stated on Amazon, like I was a step behind). It was all user error. I was to busy trying to multitask, hey it normally works well for me (but NOT with a brain befuddled by fog). Mind focused + storyline racing = I cannot put the Kindle to sleep (nor myself for that matter but I am NOT complaining).
Horror no longer scares me, "sci-fi" scares me. Why? I say it often Dean Koontz terrifies me when he bases his books on future probabilities etc. and that is where the masterful Ms. Giorgi takes us, a very possible future. The characters grip you (Dr. Montoya is a favorite) and the story sucks you in, suddenly realizing you have now reached the last page. Wait, what?! But I want more Skylar, and yes more Yulia darn it. Yup, the story is done but it was a fun ride.
The hospital scene with Lauren hit way too close to home for me. I had to put it down as my heart cried and ached. I remembered my own mad dash (only 5 weeks ago) through a hospital racing to my Mom has she breathed her last (damnit, crying again). It is a scene that too many of us have played in our lives and it was well written. Kudos.

[E.E. Giorgi]

Click here to download the first chapter of GENE CARDS in Kindle format, ePub or pdf.

[Garek Godrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gripped me from the first page and kept me frantically turning to the next one. Giorgi makes you sweat as she puts you in touch with these very real, very relatable characters and takes you on a wild ride through the entire book. I had to make myself quit reading so I could get at least 2 hours sleep before work the next day. I used every second of my breaks and lunch to continue this wonderful tale and came away quite satisfied. This book by E. E. Giorgi was thoroughly enjoyable and ranks among my top five favorite books.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giorgi continues to excite me. Her style is both intriguing yet beautifully written. The premise is engaging and relevant. I always look forward to the next Giorgi book after each one I finish!