This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil Series, book 1)
By Emily Suvada
Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius.
That’s no surprise, since Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own.
When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race.
Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?
This book is a weird book but I really enjoyed it. When I first started to read it I was intrigued instantly, as so many questions already started flowing in my head and I think that is really important in a first impression.
The main storyline is that there is a girl called Catarina (Cat or Bobcat) who’s scientist father is dead and she’s the key to decrypt the vaccine of an infection which has caused the world to become apocalyptic. The infection is known as Hydra and when a person hit stage 3, they explode up into the sky. This is the weird part of the book, in order to become temporarily immune to the disease, they have to eat the flesh of the infected. It’s like a zombie story but the opposite way round, as the infected are the ones being eaten rather than doing the eating. When a human is near a none exploded infected, they get overcome with something called the Wrath which causes them to eat the infected. If the wrath has too strong of a hold on a person it causes them to go mad and they become Lurkers. Which is a group of people who can no longer really talk and will hunt down infected and healthy people to eat. They basically go full cannibalists. So the aim is for Catarina to decrypt the vaccine to prevent all this madness.
One of the things I enjoyed about this book was how creative it was. It was such a unique story plot idea and there was so many little things that just added to the creativity, such as a hidden poem. Cat at the beginning of the book discusses how she shoots down these pigeons that have a secret message hidden in their DNA sequence. Which is a poem. She reveals a couple of the lines but at the end of the book, it has the full code made up of ATGC letters that lead to the full poem by changing it to binary then ascii. I believe I’ve fully converted the poem and have placed it at the end of the spoilers section below.
One of the things I didn’t enjoy about the book was some of the words used. Being a strong sci-fi book and written in first person by the genius main character, it meant a lot of big science words were used. Even though I’m a programmer myself, I still struggled to understand sometimes and the big words just got in my way. Some people will find this book easier to read than me and will understand more but I personally sometimes struggled. It’s understandable why it’s used though and the author Emily Suvada does have a programmer and astrophysics background which explains it.
Another thing I didn’t like was the use of the phrase ‘oh shit’, this was used a lot throughout this book. In a way it makes the characters seem natural as they respond to a situation but I just think there’s more creative responses rather than just saying ‘oh shit’ everytime the going gets tough. I’m just not a fan of the use of swear words unnecessarily or in a none creative way.
Something else to criticise about This Mortal Coil is the lack of character description given. I barely could visualise what the characters looked like which made it hard to connect to the story sometimes. There was little things like scars and cleanliness but I don’t even know what hair colour Lachlan, Cole, Leobren had. I like full character descriptions.
Some positives of the book was that the writing style was very descriptive. It reminded me a bit of Cassandra Clare’s writing style and felt a bit familiar. I also appreciated the length of the chapters, I would have liked them a tad shorter but overall I liked the chapter length. The spoilers section explains in more detail what I enjoyed about this book.
*SPOILERS*
Cat has a love interest known as Dax, who works for her father Lachlan. I always love romance in books, so I was glad to see this introduced early on. Problem was Cat was separated from her father and Dax as they were took to help create a vaccine. Throughout the mission, Dax is what motivates her to keep going… well, till she realises he never loved her just used it as a way to get close to her father. It’s not all doom and glow though as Cat falls for another anyway. More about that later.
Lachlan and Dax work for a company called Cartaxus who are a big organisation that caused great technological enhancements in genetic technology which causes people to have panels inside them that has a range of apps for cosmetics, communications and healing purposes. Originally, you think Cartaxus are the bad guys but that changes.
This book was filled with unexpected twists and turns, throughout the book I never suspected Lachlan to still be alive and as evil as everyone made him out to be, yet during the finale he was. Lachlan wants to take over everyone's DNA and minds to remove their instinct to destroy the wrath. Removing the wrath isn’t the evil part it’s the part he wants to do it by force and by risking many lives. Lachlans reputation deteriorates throughout the book but some part of me felt like something was missing and misunderstood just like Cat believed but in the end he was completely false. When Cat realised he was alive, she tried to sacrifice herself and exploded both of them but it turned out she only killed an innocent puppet and her father was actually in Nevada. This means I’d imagine in book 2 (This Cruel Design) that it’ll be a quest to kill the father.
Another twist was when Cat bit Dax’s ear off. Dax was being mind controlled by Lachlan and it caused Dax to attack Cat. To try and break free she bites at his ear, I was just expecting a kick or a headbutt but did appreciate the bite instead.
I think one of the most realist scenes was when Cat had a dilemma of trying to cut her panel out. To inflict pain on yourself is a really hard thing for your mind to let you do. You could see her struggle as she knew she needed to cut herself but doing it was another thing. Eventually she brings herself to do it as it was believed to be life or death. I enjoyed the realism of this scene.
One of the expected twists was for Cat to fall in love with Cole. Although Cat and Cole are against their feelings due to loving another, they do eventually give in when Cat realises Dax doesn’t love her. It builds up right from when Cat is introduced to Cole, even though originally she thought he was trying to kill her. This was expected but the part I didn’t expect was the underlying truth on how they’ve fallen in love. Cat discovers she is Jun Bei (the biggest most unexpected twist), Coles childhood friend and love. She was altered by her pretend father and her memories suppressed. This explains how they fell in love so fast and naturally entered a relationship.
A fun/good scene was when Cole and Cat kiss in his bedroom. After realising she wanted Cole, she runs to his room and just goes for it and they both make out and it’s clear it was probably going to lead to sex as Cole shirt lifts off. However they get interrupted by a knock at the door and is handed clothes for Cat to wear to the procedure with a note saying to use the bathroom to avoid being seen again. Cole and Cat’s makeout was seen by everyone. It was very embarrassing and a nice touch to uplift the story. There was actually more humour in this book than I expected between the characters and there was the odd good joke very now and then.
Overall, I believe this to be worth 4 stars as the storyline was enjoyable and unique and for the most part I enjoyed the writing style. What really got this to 4 stars was the effort that’s clearly been put into this book but also the creativity that was put into the decrypted poem. A very dedicated book by Emily Suvada.
Pigeon Poem:
My body is a prison for my mind;
A cage of bone and sinew for my soul
This double-helix is a chain that binds my will,
forcing me under its control.
I live in flesh, in suffering and toil,
Dreaming of higher things, yearning to fly;
To wrench my spirit from this Mortal Coil
And Soar, unfettered into open sky.
So I will split this helix at its core;
Destroy the genes that formed this ancient cage.
Rebuild this body into something more
Than flesh and blood and misery and rage.
And yet, the laws of physics may prove right;
Dark matter cannot transform into light.
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