E.E. Giorgi was probably the easiest discovery/addition to the list yet. Originally recommended to me by mega-indie Nicholas Sansbury Smith, she’d won the Reader’s Choice Award, and a B.R.A.G medal. With all this cool stuff, how could I resist?
It took me a while to get to it because my TBR list is always pretty full. Then P.T. Hylton read her book — wouldn’t shut up about it — and I kept seeing it here and there in various nooks and crannies of the Internet, but my TBR list wasn’t getting any shorter. Then one day I pushed her book to the top of the list and read it — and it was stunning. This is the real/hard sci-fi I remember from growing up: fiction with real science as a critical plot element, and nary a Heisenberg Inhibitor in sight. And get this: E.E. Giorgi’s actually a scientist. A geneticist, to be precise. I imagine she says “that’s very significant” and “indubitably” and “we’re not gods, damn you!” about twenty times a day.
Let me just say, if I had a job where I got to say “indubitably” that often, I’d be the happiest boy in the world.
The basic plot of Chimeras, her award-winning novel is there’s been a murder, and only Detective Track Presius — a genetic Chimera (a real scientific term) — can figure out who the killer is. Okay, he has help along the way from his incredibly funny and wise partner Satish, and a beautiful lab geek named Diane (who works with the police). Together, they make literary music. I love the hard-boiled style Giorgi writes in, reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, as well as the emotional depths she takes us in this story about a virtual outcast of a man with superhuman senses. By the time you finish the book, if you’re not shaking your fist at the sky shouting, “We’re not gods, damn you…!” then nothing can help you.
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