This Cruel Design (This Mortal Coil Series, book 2)

By Emily Suvada 

Blurb: 
The nightmare of the outbreak is finally over, but Cat’s fight has only just begun.

Exhausted, wounded, and reeling from revelations that have shaken her to her core, Cat is at a breaking point. Camped in the woods with Cole and Leoben, she’s working day and night, desperate to find a way to stop Lachlan’s plan to reprogram humanity. But she’s failing—Cat can’t even control her newly regrown panel, and try as she might to ignore them, she keeps seeing glitching visions from her past everywhere she turns.

When news arrives that the Hydra virus might not be as dead as they’d thought, the group is pushed into an uneasy alliance with Cartaxus to hunt down Lachlan and fix the vaccine. Their search takes them to Entropia, a city of genehackers hidden deep in the desert that could also hold the answers about Cat’s past that she’s been searching for.

But when confronted with lies and betrayals, Cat is forced to question everything she knows and everyone she trusts. And while Lachlan is always two steps ahead, the biggest threat to Cat may be the secrets buried in her own mind.

Review: 
This is the second book to the This Mortal Coil series, I enjoyed the first one a lot so I had high hopes that this one would be just as good but I was a bit disappointed. 

Overall I would say the book is quite quick paced, especially at the beginning. It doesn’t take long for everything to kick off and for exciting scenes. I’m use to quite slow books so it does make a pleasant change for me.

A cute quirk in the book for me was the development of Cat’s and Leoben’s friendship. I just really enjoyed their scenes together properly better than Cat’s scenes with anyone else. One of things I particularly enjoyed was Leoben trying to pick a nickname for Cat and came up with Squid which became a running joke throughout.

Even though I didn’t agree with all the twists I would say there was plenty of them and that helped make the book more interesting and the good ones did shadow the bad twists.

I would say the big difference between this book and the first one is that it was a bit far fetched. What I liked about the first book was the development of science and healing, it was good and not too unrealistic. But in This Cruel Design it seemed to stretch it too far for me to enjoy as much. 

*SPOILERS*

In the first chapter of the book we already have a major plot twist. It turns out Jun Bei is Cat. This is developed further on in the book to the point it gets confusing. I didn’t mind the reveal at the beginning when it came across rather simple. Cat was Jun Bei, but Lachlan changed her appearance to look more like him and wiped her memories so she’d forget. However I started to dislike the twist when it got overcomplicated. Jun Bei was a person of her own inside Cat and it was more of a body invasion which doesn’t make sense, at least to me.

When Dax makes an entrance into this book we see he is now infected with the virus by Cartaxus to encourage him to make a cure quicker. This did come to a shock to me and thought he was going to die, in the end he didn’t. My problem with this was how slow his condition was going considering the strangers that had it were dying really quickly and in the book they kept going on about how fast the virus was killing now and how Dax was as at that stage but yet he lived.

Another problem I had with Dax character was how he ended up being a love interest of Leoben, I just don’t think that made total sense in the series and there wasn’t any hints in the first book. It just seemed a random coupling.

I did like the creation of Anna being a main character, we knew of Anna from the first book but hadn’t met her or knew that much about her. It was good to see this characters storyline develop. I also liked her bad ass attitude but it’s understandable to be that way when you can’t die. 

We also had further development of Cat’s background. We now know that Lachlan was actually her father and Regina ended up being her mother technically as Cat was a clone of the original baby. I liked this storyline and though it fit quite well.

Cole’s development ruined Cole for me. He just wasn’t a nice protective man anymore but more of a threat. Whilst reading I thought Mato was a better match for Cat but then Mato proved to be psycho so in the end I decided non fit. I guess if I was to ship a couple in this series it would be Cat and Leoben.

One of my favourite scenes in this book was when Cat chopped her hand off to help with her escape. That was the most unexpected thing in this book. It was really well written and I also liked how her new hand wasn’t her hand and that it turned out Regina stole it.

Eventually in the book we got to see Agnes again who went missing in the beginning of the first book. I was worried the author was gonna forget to make her a part of the story again and although she didn’t have a big role to play she did help in a small way and her disappearance was explained. 

I believe there is going to be a third book and I’m interested to see how this series plays out but I’m not as excited as I was for this book. As I’m worried it won’t be as good as the first like this one was. For that reason I’m giving it 3 stars.

Rating: 3 runes out of 5 

Check out my review on book 3: (tbc)

 written by Lauren

This Cruel Design (This Mortal Coil Series, book 2)

By Emily Suvada 

Blurb: 
The nightmare of the outbreak is finally over, but Cat’s fight has only just begun.

Exhausted, wounded, and reeling from revelations that have shaken her to her core, Cat is at a breaking point. Camped in the woods with Cole and Leoben, she’s working day and night, desperate to find a way to stop Lachlan’s plan to reprogram humanity. But she’s failing—Cat can’t even control her newly regrown panel, and try as she might to ignore them, she keeps seeing glitching visions from her past everywhere she turns.

When news arrives that the Hydra virus might not be as dead as they’d thought, the group is pushed into an uneasy alliance with Cartaxus to hunt down Lachlan and fix the vaccine. Their search takes them to Entropia, a city of genehackers hidden deep in the desert that could also hold the answers about Cat’s past that she’s been searching for.

But when confronted with lies and betrayals, Cat is forced to question everything she knows and everyone she trusts. And while Lachlan is always two steps ahead, the biggest threat to Cat may be the secrets buried in her own mind.

Review: 
This is the second book to the This Mortal Coil series, I enjoyed the first one a lot so I had high hopes that this one would be just as good but I was a bit disappointed. 

Overall I would say the book is quite quick paced, especially at the beginning. It doesn’t take long for everything to kick off and for exciting scenes. I’m use to quite slow books so it does make a pleasant change for me.

A cute quirk in the book for me was the development of Cat’s and Leoben’s friendship. I just really enjoyed their scenes together properly better than Cat’s scenes with anyone else. One of things I particularly enjoyed was Leoben trying to pick a nickname for Cat and came up with Squid which became a running joke throughout.

Even though I didn’t agree with all the twists I would say there was plenty of them and that helped make the book more interesting and the good ones did shadow the bad twists.

I would say the big difference between this book and the first one is that it was a bit far fetched. What I liked about the first book was the development of science and healing, it was good and not too unrealistic. But in This Cruel Design it seemed to stretch it too far for me to enjoy as much. 

*SPOILERS*

In the first chapter of the book we already have a major plot twist. It turns out Jun Bei is Cat. This is developed further on in the book to the point it gets confusing. I didn’t mind the reveal at the beginning when it came across rather simple. Cat was Jun Bei, but Lachlan changed her appearance to look more like him and wiped her memories so she’d forget. However I started to dislike the twist when it got overcomplicated. Jun Bei was a person of her own inside Cat and it was more of a body invasion which doesn’t make sense, at least to me.

When Dax makes an entrance into this book we see he is now infected with the virus by Cartaxus to encourage him to make a cure quicker. This did come to a shock to me and thought he was going to die, in the end he didn’t. My problem with this was how slow his condition was going considering the strangers that had it were dying really quickly and in the book they kept going on about how fast the virus was killing now and how Dax was as at that stage but yet he lived.

Another problem I had with Dax character was how he ended up being a love interest of Leoben, I just don’t think that made total sense in the series and there wasn’t any hints in the first book. It just seemed a random coupling.

I did like the creation of Anna being a main character, we knew of Anna from the first book but hadn’t met her or knew that much about her. It was good to see this characters storyline develop. I also liked her bad ass attitude but it’s understandable to be that way when you can’t die. 

We also had further development of Cat’s background. We now know that Lachlan was actually her father and Regina ended up being her mother technically as Cat was a clone of the original baby. I liked this storyline and though it fit quite well.

Cole’s development ruined Cole for me. He just wasn’t a nice protective man anymore but more of a threat. Whilst reading I thought Mato was a better match for Cat but then Mato proved to be psycho so in the end I decided non fit. I guess if I was to ship a couple in this series it would be Cat and Leoben.

One of my favourite scenes in this book was when Cat chopped her hand off to help with her escape. That was the most unexpected thing in this book. It was really well written and I also liked how her new hand wasn’t her hand and that it turned out Regina stole it.

Eventually in the book we got to see Agnes again who went missing in the beginning of the first book. I was worried the author was gonna forget to make her a part of the story again and although she didn’t have a big role to play she did help in a small way and her disappearance was explained. 

I believe there is going to be a third book and I’m interested to see how this series plays out but I’m not as excited as I was for this book. As I’m worried it won’t be as good as the first like this one was. For that reason I’m giving it 3 stars.

Rating: 3 runes out of 5 

Check out my review on book 3: (tbc)

 written by Lauren

This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil Series, book 1)

By Emily Suvada

Blurb: 
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?

Review: 
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.

Rating: 4 runes out of 5 

Check out my review on book 2: This Cruel Design

 written by Lauren

This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil Series, book 1)

By Emily Suvada

Blurb: 
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?

Review: 
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.

Rating: 4 runes out of 5 

Check out my review on book 2: This Cruel Design

 written by Lauren