Title:
Eternavix
Author:
Alex L. Kaine
Genre:
Dystopian/Young Adult/Sci-fi
Publication
Date: November 2013
Website
Book: http://eternavix.com
Facebook:
/AlexLKaine
Twitter:
@AlexLKaine
Length:
334 pages
Format:
Paperback
Size:
6 x 9
ISBN-13:
978-1493632909
List
Price: $11.99
Format:
Ebook
Amazon
ASIN: B00GCQSUJO
List Price: $2.99
GIVEAWAY LINK
SYNOPSIS
Welcome to the future.
Genetic engineering has been perfected, manmade dragons fly the skies
and devils are bred as weapons of war. A
powerful stem-cell drug called Eternavix
promises eternal youth, but ONLY if you are loyal to The Universal Imperium—the
empire of empires that dominates the planet.
Eternavix can only
be produced by using the DNA of women with rare, genetic traits. Mara is a Eurasian with vivid blue eyes, making
her a perfect candidate for DNA extraction.
She travels to war-torn Chicago with the hopes of beginning a new life,
completely unaware that her body is worth a fortune to the greed mongers
willing to sell her to The Imperium. Her
only chance at freedom from a secret, desert prison known as “The Nursery” is
an unorthodox alliance with a bio-designed devil who unexpectedly falls in love
with her. Is her life worth making a
deal with the devil?
REVIEW
Rating: 5 Stars
Review: I love when a book surprises me! I am a sucker for dystopian works. When I was graciously offered the opportunity to read this book, I jumped at the chance. The synopsis gave me the feeling it would be a little of a combination of constructs of personal rights vs needs of the nation (i.e. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) and a little bit of Philip K Dick, but it's so fresh! It's such a new, interesting read that I got lost in it. This was one of those books that I took my time reading because I didn't want it to end. I wanted to know where Mara was going, what was going to happen to her, whether she would be okay, and I wanted to know everything about this world Mr. Kaine had constructed for his story.
Review: I love when a book surprises me! I am a sucker for dystopian works. When I was graciously offered the opportunity to read this book, I jumped at the chance. The synopsis gave me the feeling it would be a little of a combination of constructs of personal rights vs needs of the nation (i.e. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) and a little bit of Philip K Dick, but it's so fresh! It's such a new, interesting read that I got lost in it. This was one of those books that I took my time reading because I didn't want it to end. I wanted to know where Mara was going, what was going to happen to her, whether she would be okay, and I wanted to know everything about this world Mr. Kaine had constructed for his story.
I would tell you to read this book for the world-building alone! It's gritty, real, and so, so clever.
As a character reader, I loved Mara. She wasn't a fainting heroine. She was strong with just the right mix of innocence and wonder thrown in to make her very relatable to me as a reader. I felt pulled into her world with her. Be-elzebub was fabulous. I'm particular to religious theology so the name alone amused me. I literally laughed out loud at Mara asking him if he were the Devil. I've always loved the idea of genetically engineered humanoids and Bee does not disappoint at all on that scale. There are a ton of side characters who all came with their own interesting roles from former sex toy to the rich and powerful to the sad saps who get eaten by dragons (They're genetically engineered beasts created for the last wars which ravaged the world to leave it in the state it's in when we start out with Mara.) which makes it all so rich it takes a while to breathe it all in.
There's so much world here: love, sex, greed, powerplays galore.
I loved this book. It's not popcorn fiction that passes three hours on a weeknight. This is a book that takes time to savor it all since it's clear that the writer really put thought into building not just a story but a whole world. I'd tell anyone who's a fan of this genre to give it a shot.
Reviewed by Shandra Torbett on behalf of This Redhead LOVES Books
INTERVIEW
Q: Your
photo makes you look a little bit demonic. Are you?
Alex Kaine:
Well, my family has been known to call me the 'Prince of Darkness' but that
just refers to my
attitude
about the world. I have a cynical streak that surfaces on occasion. No, I'm
certainly not demonic.
I'm not even
evil. I mean, all of us have the potential for evil to one degree or another.
But I try not to be.
I'm a good
guy. I would never want to hurt anybody – unless of course somebody really
pisses me off.
Q: You're
smiling. But evil is a major theme in ETERNAVIX. What do you think is the
nature of evil? How
do you
define it?
Alex Kaine:
There was a time when I didn't believe in good and evil. There were just
behaviors and
consequences,
actions and outcomes. And I still tend to see things that way. But over the
years I've also
come to see
that there really is human evil.
Q: Which is?
Alex Kaine:
Evil is, at its core, insensitivity to the pain of others in the course of
one's decisions and
actions.
Total evil is total insensitivity. We all understand this when evil is overt.
Some creep with a gun
shooting
school children. Political tyrants. But there are smaller evils, of course.
Manipulative mothers.
Oppressive
fathers. Or vice versa. Those who take no responsibility for the pain and harm
they inflict. The
exploitive
types, the con men, the Ponzi schemers, who often act the opposite of what they
really are.
Q: How do
you define 'good'?
Alex Kaine:
Good is harder to define, I think. It's not the polar opposite of evil; it's
not just sensitivity to
the pain of
others, and the more sensitive you are the better person you are. That's not
what good is. It's
more like
connectedness to others. Good is concern for the whole, thoughtfulness and care
that goes
beyond one's
self, and actions that support all of that. But it's not martyrdom. It's not
self-sacrifice or
selflessness,
because your pain, your wellbeing also matters.
Q: There are
a lot of evil people in ETERNAVIX.
Alex Kaine:
Yes, there are. People whose actions are evil, that's the better way to put it.
Harzak is evil, as is
his
girlfriend, Bev, though to a lesser extent. The bounty hunters certainly are
evil. The entire political and
social
construct of the Universal Imperium is evil, from the top on down.
Q: And the
devil in the story, Be-elzebub?
Alex Kaine:
Or 'Bee' as he comes to be called.
Q: Bee? Like
buzz, buzz?
Alex Kaine:
Like sting, sting.
Q: Oh. In
any case, you'd have to call him evil, wouldn't you?
Alex Kaine:
Bee is a manmade devil who has done very evil things in the past. He inflicted
extreme pain
and death
and felt little or no sympathy for those he harmed. He's been part of an
oppressive, exploitive
system and
he loathes it, but he has not made a stand. He's the classic Nazi who is just
following orders.
During the
Baby Wars, some of this was excusable, because indeed he was obeying orders.
Every soldier in
combat has
to be evil for a time in order to achieve what we hope is the greater good. And
Be-elzebub is an
excellent
soldier. Trouble is, the Imperium never released him from his duties, and over
many decades
Bee has
slowly developed the rudiments of a conscience.
Q: Let's
talk about Eternavix, the miracle stem-cell drug that arrests the aging process
and allows people
to stay
physically young for decades or even centuries. Do you think a drug like
Eternavix is possible?
Alex Kaine:
Yes, I do. Either a drug or some kind of treatment or therapy. Google is
already going down
that path
with research to significantly extend human life. Other corporations probably
will follow. You
can see the
enormous commercial possibilities, can't you? How much would you pay for
something that
keeps you
young and healthy for hundreds of years, or maybe forever? Will billionaires be
the only ones
who can
afford the price? Every widely adopted technology has social and political
consequences, and it's
not hard to
see a drug like Eternavix becoming a power base. Especially if it's not handled
ethically. And
frankly I
don't know how you would structure the ethics. I mean, who gets it? Who
doesn't? By the very
fact that
some get the drug and some don't, you're creating a social elite right there.
Q: Why not
everyone? Why couldn't everyone take it?
Alex Kaine:
You would have to eliminate children. You can't have everyone living forever
and women
continuing
to have babies. That would not be 'sustainable,' to use an over-used word. A
powerful part of
human nature
is about having kids, about reproduction, and I don't see that going away just
because
people start
living very long lives. Anyway, I can't imagine a world without kids. An
all-adult world? That
would be
awful. So I can foresee an elite that arranges things so they have it all -
immortality and children
- while the
vast majority of humankind lives and dies in the traditional manner.
Q: In the
novel, there's more going on than just extended or eternal human life. There is
also the genetic
engineering
of new species, some of them quite horrible.
Alex Kaine:
Right. The mastery of genetics, which I'm saying in the story occurs three or
four decades
from the
present, leads to the development of Eternavix, the stem-cell drug. But every
technology has
branches and
offshoots, and one of those for genetic engineering is the ability to create
humanoids. So, in
the absence
of ethics or in service to the needs of warfare, you might have manmade dragons
and devils,
super-warriors,
and so on. And many or all of these humanoids might be equivalent of livestock
to those
who create
them. Slaves for lack of a better word.
Q: A lot of
unpleasant possibilities. We haven't talked yet about Mara, the main character
in the story.
How did you
come up with her?
Alex Kaine:
When I began writing ETERNAVIX, the story started with what is now Episode Two,
with Beelzebub
narrating.
Mara originally was just an innocent teenager, likeable but not all that
bright. She was
kind of
feral, having grown up in what became a wilderness during the wars that
established the
Imperium.
After I finished that piece of the novel, I had a change of heart. I got to
thinking and decided I
needed to
tell more of Mara's story early on and that led to me making her the main
character – well, she
and Bee are
sort of co-lead characters. And for Mara to carry the story, she had to be
interesting and
different.
She still has a small trace of that feral quality, but she's smart, she has
guts, she's very brave,
and she has
a good sense of humor. Bad things befall her and at times there is nothing she
can do about it,
but Mara is
not a victim, she's a hero.
Q: Last
question: will there be a sequel to ETERNAVIX?
Alex Kaine:
I hope so and I hope readers demand a sequel. The world of ETERNAVIX has many
as-yet
unexplored dimensions to it.
Alex L. Kaine
Author of Eternavix
Alex
Kaine is the pen name of a writer and author whose books
in a different category have sold in the tens of millions worldwide.
He is an eclectic reader and a lover of all writing well
written no matter the genre. He has been an independent,
self-supporting,
paying-the-bills, full-time author for … well, let's
just say for many years. ETERNAVIX is his first sci-fi thriller. Alex
has a unique perspective on the issue of “selective
wellness”
that affects the world as a whole. He enjoys discussions
on genetic engineering as well as other high tech sci-fi realities
in life today.
I loved the interview! So glad I am apart of this tour. This book was AMAZING!!!!!
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