Ancestor: A Novel
“The ancestors are out there…you have to believe me.”
From acclaimed author Scott Sigler—New York Times bestselling creator of Infected and Contagious—comes a tale of genetic experimentation’s worst nightmare come true.
Every five minutes, a transplant candidate dies while waiting for a heart, a liver, a kidney. Imagine a technology that could provide those life-saving transplant organs for a nominal fee ... and imagine what a company would do to get a monopoly on that technology.
On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, PJ Colding leads a group of geneticists who have discovered this holy grail of medicine. By reverse-engineering the genomes of thousands of mammals, Colding's team has dialed back the evolutionary clock to re-create humankind’s common ancestor. The method? Illegal. The result? A computer-engineered living creature, an animal whose organs can be implanted in any person, and with no chance of transplant rejection.
There's just one problem: these ancestors are not the docile herd animals that Colding's team envisioned. Instead, Colding’s work has given birth to something big, something evil.
With these killer creatures on the prowl, Colding and the woman he loves must fight to survive — even as government agents close in to shut the project down, and the deep-pocketed company backing this research proves to have its own cold-blooded agenda.
As the creators become the prey in the ultimate battle for survival, Scott Sigler takes readers on the ultimate thrill-ride—and offers a chilling cautionary account of what can happen when hubris, greed, and madness drive scientific experimentation past the brink of reason.
From acclaimed author Scott Sigler—New York Times bestselling creator of Infected and Contagious—comes a tale of genetic experimentation’s worst nightmare come true.
Every five minutes, a transplant candidate dies while waiting for a heart, a liver, a kidney. Imagine a technology that could provide those life-saving transplant organs for a nominal fee ... and imagine what a company would do to get a monopoly on that technology.
On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, PJ Colding leads a group of geneticists who have discovered this holy grail of medicine. By reverse-engineering the genomes of thousands of mammals, Colding's team has dialed back the evolutionary clock to re-create humankind’s common ancestor. The method? Illegal. The result? A computer-engineered living creature, an animal whose organs can be implanted in any person, and with no chance of transplant rejection.
There's just one problem: these ancestors are not the docile herd animals that Colding's team envisioned. Instead, Colding’s work has given birth to something big, something evil.
With these killer creatures on the prowl, Colding and the woman he loves must fight to survive — even as government agents close in to shut the project down, and the deep-pocketed company backing this research proves to have its own cold-blooded agenda.
As the creators become the prey in the ultimate battle for survival, Scott Sigler takes readers on the ultimate thrill-ride—and offers a chilling cautionary account of what can happen when hubris, greed, and madness drive scientific experimentation past the brink of reason.
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Community Reviews
Like many other reviewers, this is not my first Scott Sigler adventure. I discovered Infected via the podcast feed when I was a teenager and absolutely LOVED it.
With Ancestor, I read the eBook over a few lunch breaks and while fighting sleep at night. It had an unnecessarily slow buildup at the very beginning, which is the only reason I give this book 4 stars instead of 5. I was particularly disappointed by the false start in the very beginning. I got invested in the containment storyline only to see the whole place firebombed... Once the story got going, it was hard to put it down! There was a good balance between action and revelation that I was never overwhelmed with the converging story lines, but also never bored.
I do wish there had been more explanation about the creatures' abilities and why Jian created them the way she did. Knowing they were engineered to be unstoppable killing machines to finally fulfill her wishes was a good start, but I never did figure out the intended purpose of that dorsal flap? Was it the only way the Ancestors could communicate?
With Ancestor, I read the eBook over a few lunch breaks and while fighting sleep at night. It had an unnecessarily slow buildup at the very beginning, which is the only reason I give this book 4 stars instead of 5. I was particularly disappointed by the false start in the very beginning. I got invested in the containment storyline only to see the whole place firebombed... Once the story got going, it was hard to put it down! There was a good balance between action and revelation that I was never overwhelmed with the converging story lines, but also never bored.
I do wish there had been more explanation about the creatures' abilities and why Jian created them the way she did. Knowing they were engineered to be unstoppable killing machines to finally fulfill her wishes was a good start, but I never did figure out the intended purpose of that dorsal flap? Was it the only way the Ancestors could communicate?
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