Kalahari by Jessica Khoury

Sarah Carmichael is the daughter of zoologists living and working in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Sarah has lived all her life in the field, working alongside her parents. Now it's just Sarah and her father after her mother died four months earlier from a bee attack. Helping them is Theo, a Bushman who has trained Sarah to track and to live in the Kalahari.

Sarah and Theo wait by the landing strip for a plane bringing in five teens who have signed on to a educational safari. The teens include seventeen-year-old Joey Xiong, a Hmong American from California, Canadian Avani Sharma, Miranda Kirk and Kase Rider of Boston, and seventeen-year-old Sam Quartermain from Pittsburg. In return for hosting the teens on a conservation exchange program, Sarah's father will receive much needed research funding from the Song Foundation. When the group arrives at camp they are met by Sarah's father who tells the group that they will be staying in tents.

The group has no chance to settle in when Sarah's father and Theo race out of camp in the truck to try to locate poachers who are hunting a white lion. When Sarah's father does not return by dark, she tries to contact him via radio but is unsuccessful. Sam asks Sarah if they should be worried and she tells him that the situation with the poachers has been getting progressively worse. As night comes on Sarah becomes increasingly concerned about her dad and Theo and even more so when they receive a garbled radio transmission that gives their location and that they are being pursued.  The transmission ends with the sounds of gunshots, leading Sarah to believe her father is now in grave danger.  Sarah is unable to reach Henrico, the South African warden located south of their camp, and she cannot contact the military nor anyone else to help them because the satellite radio is in the Cruiser with her father and Theo. 

At first Sarah wants to leave immediately to track her father but Sam insists he accompany her and this results in all five teens deciding not to stay in camp. Packing water and muesli bars, the group sets off the next morning, with Sarah tracking her father and Theo. Eventually they discover tracks that indicate the Cruiser was being followed by another vehicle. By evening Sarah makes another discovery that the trucks are being followed by an adult male lion. As the sun is beginning to set, Sarah and the group discover the damaged Cruiser smashed into a tree. Tracks leading away from the Cruiser lead Sarah and Sam to Theo who is fatally wounded. As Avani, whose parents are both doctors, attempts to help Theo, he warns them of a silver spirit, a lion hunting. Sarah is deeply shaken by Theo's death and mystified by her father's disappearance. She doesn't know if he has been captured or is somewhere out in the bush.

Sarah discovers that the lion has been around the Cruiser but instead of going after the lion, Theo appears to have followed her father. The group also discovers that the food supplies which were in the Cruiser have been ravaged by wild animals. After burying Theo, the group eats some leftover fruit and then try to rest. The next morning they manage to get the Cruiser started and head back to their camp. However, they discover that the men pursuing Sarah's father have visited the camp and burned it to the ground, destroying not only the tents and supplies, but also Sarah's parent's notes and research. They learn that a man named Abramo is in charge and is determined to find them.

Sam tells Sarah that this is all very strange as ordinary poachers would never go to these lengths, to murder researchers. Sarah creates a false trail for the men to track while she leads her group west hoping to meet up with the road that will take them to Ghansi and safety.  The next morning while working to free the truck which has become bogged down in sand, the group first hears and then is attacked by a lion. However this lion is not ordinary - it is "silver, from nose to tail, as metallic and gleaming as mercury." Sarah immediately realizes that this is the lion the men have been searching for and that they have stumbled upon something much bigger than poaching.

The lion attacks the group as they huddle in fear in the truck and they are only saved by Sarah firing her shotgun and wounding it in the shoulder. The group flees in terror into the bush. Sarah and Sam return to the area and discover the lion is no longer wounded, but behaving strangely and watch as it kills an ostrich for no reason. The lion once again picks up their scent and begins pursuing them through the desert. They only manage to escape when the entire group falls into a huge underground cavern filled with water.

Sarah and the group find their way out of the pool by crawling to the top of metal scaffolding that leads them to an above ground pumping station and find themselves in what appears to be some kind of research facility. As Sarah, Sam and the others scout out the camp, which appears to be abandoned, they discover a laboratory and then a room filled with animals in cages. The cages are filled with numerous different mammals from the Kalahari desert. Many of the cages contain animals that have been shot dead. Other cages hold live animals, some of whom are partially silver while others are like the lion, completely silver. They also find a lab worker dead in the room.

Sarah now believes that the animals have some kind of infection and that the scientists from the lab are chasing the silver lion because it escaped from this facility. Sarah's father and Theo were complications they hadn't expected and so they killed Theo and are now hunting Sarah and her group, her father and the infected lion. Sarah and Sam realize that whoever is responsible for creating the infection now want to cover up the research and will be returning to the lab to finish destroying what remains.

In a small trailer, Sarah makes a truly shocking discovery; three scientists who are infected and completely silver, locked in a room. The scientists who are in advanced stages of the infection are incoherent and in obvious distress. In the trailer, Sarah and Sam come face to face with Dr. Carl Monaghan, who admits that he created a metal that is "alive", - a type of inorganic life. Dr. Monaghan explains "Metalcium is inorganic, and yet it self-replicates. It has a kind of metabolism. It adapts to changes in its environment....Just little cells of metal at first...It was when we began adding lead that its true potential was realized." Avani fills in the details for the others, that metalcium sneaks "into an organism's system by hiding behind a mask of lead." Monaghan admits that he had hoped to use his discovery to heal but, instead the metalcium began attacking them, converting every cell into metal.

The doctor explains that they came to Kalahari because their research could be conducted in secrecy and it is rich in minerals which they required for their research. Once Monaghan realized the danger he tried to stop the research, but Corpus, the company funding the research, refused. Now Corpus has sent out Tony Abramo to clean up the mess, by killing everyone involved and everyone who knows about the research. Monaghan tells Sarah and Sam that they must leave immediately.

Sarah knows they have to get to safety and tell the world about the deadly infection but with Abramo on their tail, her father still missing, and the possibility that they have all been exposed to infection, the likelihood of her getting to Ghansi is beginning to seem remote.

Discussion

Jessica Khoury's novels are characterized by unique stories involving futuristic science in the style of John Wyndham. The story in Kalahari is centered around a new virus, Metalcium, that has been created in a lab, and which gradually converts living tissue into metal, eventually killing its host. Although this twist makes Kalahari an intriguing read, it doesn't appear until Chapter Eight. Instead the first hook is the disappearance of Sarah's father and the group's foray into the semi-desert to find him. From there the plot thickens leading the group from one adventure to the next. The resolution to the story flows quickly and ties up loose ends rather neatly.

Khoury immediately sets up the beginnings of a romance between Sarah and Sam, who seem to develop a rapport quickly, learning about each other as the story moves along. There are other pairings as well, although they really don't figure much into the story; Miranda and Kase are already a couple, but Joey, the group clown, likes the brainy Canadian, Avani. The minor characters are not as well developed, only enough to give readers a sense of who they are.

The author does have her main character, Sarah Carmichael experience an inner journey that parallels the physical one she undertakes in the novel. Sarah is not keen to spend time with teenagers. Her one experience in school in the United States was disastrous. "The kids in the class called me Mowgli and threw bananas at me during lunch." However, Theo encourages her, telling Sarah she needs to spend time with humans too. When Sarah first meets the five teens she judges them as shallow and uncaring  However, her opinion begins to change. When Miranda offers her diamond ring for Sarah to use on a stick, Sarah feels ashamed that she has made assumptions about Miranda without really knowing her. "When I studied wild animals, I always waited until I had all the facts before drawing conclusions about their habits and lives -- why couldn't I do that with people?" By the end of the novel, Sarah is glad to have met all five teens despite what they went through.

When Sarah becomes infected with the Metalcium which will be fatal, she begins to regret how she has lived over the past four months since her mother's death. She admits to herself that since her mother's death she hasn't cared much about life. "The world had been covered in a gray veneer, tasteless and uninteresting. She had been the sun that lit the savanna, and when she died, I'd been left in darkness, not caring whether I stumbled forever through the night or fell over a cliff and was lost. " However, now that she's caught the incurable infection, Sarah begins to see life differently. The change of heart has also come from her deepening relationship with Sam who has helped her to recognize that she could be happy again and "that the sun could rise on a world without my mom." Sarah also realizes that's she's never taken the time to cherish all the special moments in her life and that she's taken the time she's had for granted.

Kalahari has a few spots in the storyline which are weak. The first is the unrealistic actions of Sarah's father, Ty Carmichael, who leaves his daughter with five inexperienced teenagers in a bush camp, taking ALL their food supplies AND the satellite radio with him. Ty is not just going for a short drive in the bush, he's going to try to track what he believes are poachers, who present some degree of risk for him and Theo. It's unlikely that Carmichael, as a seasoned field researcher would have done this.

Secondly, although Sarah's father does manage to escape from Abramo and he has considerable skill as a tracker, he never seems to quite be able to catch up to Sarah and her group. That is, until conveniently at the climax of the novel, when Sarah faces down Abramo - making his sudden appearance seem somewhat contrived.

Kalahari is filled with interesting facts about  this semi-desert region of Africa including the wildlife, the climate and geography and about the Bushmen who still live in the area. Khoury spent time in Africa at the Mabalingwe Nature Reserve and in Botswana where she had the experience of tracking elephants, lions and leopards.

Kalahari is book three in the Corpus series. Overall, Khoury's interesting storyline works well, providing readers with plenty of suspense, some intriguing science fiction and a little romance in an exotic setting.

Book Details:
Kalahari by Jessica Khoury
New York: RazorBill, an imprint of Penguin Group    2015
354 pp.

Vitro by Jessica Khoury

After receiving a mysterious email from her mother telling her that there is an emergency, seventeen-year-old Sophie Crue arrives in Guam searching for someone to take her to Skin Island. None of the local pilots are interested, warning her away from travelling to the strange isolated island, except for one pilot, Jim Julien. Sophie recognizes Jim immediately but he doesn't remember her until she tells him that she needs to get out to Skin Island.

Sophie used to live on Guam with her parents who both worked at the Skin Island research facility. However, when her parent's marriage broke up, she moved to Boston with her father while her mother stayed on at Skin Island full time. Jim's parents broke up three years ago when he was fifteen, and his mother left Guam. His father once a pilot for tourists now drinks himself into a stupor daily.

Jim agrees to fly Sophie out to Skin Island in his Cessna Caravan. As expected, things go wrong almost immediately. When they land on the island's airstrip, all four tires on the Cessna are blown. A young boy named Nicholas comes to greet them and while he takes Sophie across the island to meet her mother, Jim stays with his airplane to see if he can repair it.

As Sophie is led across the island by Nicholas, he begins acting very strangely, telling her to be quiet when they approach the facility. When she questions him on the type of research being done on Skin Island he only smiles enigmatically.  Once inside the facility, Sophie manages to escape from him. When Sophie is forced to hide in a room, she discovers it holds a young woman asleep on a gurney who looks remarkably like herself. Suddenly, Sophie is knocked out from behind.

When Sophie awakes she finds herself in a lab with her mother, Moira, and several doctors as well as a middle aged man. Unable to speak, Sophie learns that this man, Mr. Andreyev is here to see her and that they think that she is the twin, Lux, she saw in the room. Sophie decides to play along, mute and unable to walk, to learn more about what is happening. As it turns out her mother is not researching cures for Alzheimer's. Instead, this facility is doing research on frozen left-over embryos from in-vitro procedures. These embryos have a computer chip that has a special code called the Imprima Code implanted in their brains at just the right time so brain grows around it. At nine months gestation, they transfer data to the chip. Sophie's mother, Moira developed the imprint technology which isolated the imprinting instinct and amplifies it so that when the young person is awoken after years of sleep they imprint on the first person they see. The imprint creates a deep psychological need in the person and the desire to do the will of the person they imprint on. The doctors explain that Lux has no will of her own and no sense of self. Sophie also learns that Lux is a Class Three Bodyguard meaning she is prepared to defend the person she has imprinted on.

Meanwhile Jim, unable to repair the tires on his plane, manages to roll the Cessna down to the beach and secure it in the water. He waits for a time to see if Sophie returns and when she doesn't he makes his way across the island to the research facility. There he too discovers the room holding Sophie's twin. But Jim, thinking this is Sophie who has been drugged, snatches her and makes his way out of the facility and back to his plane. Unfortunately, what Jim doesn't know is that he is carrying Sophie's twin, Lux, who was being awakened today for a potential buyer. Things begin to go badly for Jim when he runs into three young people from the island, Mary, Jay and Wyatt who behave in a hostile manner and chase him. Jim escapes from them but during the chase, Lux awakens, seeing Jim first and imprinting on him. Gradually Jim comes to realize that this is not Sophie and that he needs to go for help.

Moira eventually realizes that Sophie is playing the part of Lux. She isolates Sophie to try to protect her from Dr. Strauss and sets out to try to find Lux. Nicholas finally manages to meet up with Sophie again and he tells her that he was the first Vitro and that he wants Sophie to help him escape by stealing Corpus' helicopter. However, with Lux and Jim missing, and Sophie refusing to leave unless Jim is with her, Nicholas' plans are unravelling. As more information is revealed about the dark nature of the experiments going on on Skin Island, Sophie has to come to terms with her connection to the island and try to save her mother and Jim before all is lost.

Discussion

Vitro is the second novel by author Jessica Khoury that involves young teens dealing with the ethics of scientific experimentation - in this case, cloning.

The story in Vitro is told by three narrators, Sophie, her clone Lux and Jim. The novel could have done without the short narration by Lux - her perspective did not really add significantly to the story.  There are numerous twists to the storyline which at times feels convoluted and slow. Some situations stretched credibility enormously. For example, would a seventeen-year-old girl who receives a mysterious email from her mother whom she rarely sees, decide to leave home on her own to investigate, without telling her father? It would seem that she would be declared missing fairly quickly. 

In a situation eerily similar to the Nazi death camps, we learn that the research facility has showers that serve as gas chambers. As well, the entire compound has numerous cannisters of hydrogen cyanide gas underneath it. Dr. Strauss at one point decides to kill all the Vitros by exposing them to hydrogen cyanide gas. This scene was not written realistically in any way,  since Jim and Lux would have had to have been treated with a cyanide antidote which did not happen in the novel. They would have been in no shape to participate in the events that followed having suffered from extreme cyanide poisoning.

Although this is science fiction, Vitro is more an action-adventure story. What the character Jim endures stretches the reader's belief and reads more like a Hollywood action film; a crash landing, rolling his plane by himself into the sea, numerous chases, a fall off a cliff into a lagoon, an explosion in his plane when he tries to leave the island, a swim back to Skin Island,  poisoning by hydrogen cyanide and an explosion that throws him into the sea. All this makes Vitro overly dramatic and unbelievable.

Because the story was more action based, character development was focused on Sophie and her mother. Jim who was a main character in the novel was mostly a one dimensional hero whose function is primarily to provide Sophie with a means of travelling to and escaping from the island.

Vitro has an appealing cover but the story is not comparable to Khoury's first novel, Origins.

Book Details:
New York: Razorbill a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group
357 pp.

Origin by Jessica Khoury

Sixteen year old Pia is the most perfect human being ever created. She is perfect and she is immortal. She has a perfect memory, acute senses, excellent reflexes, impenetrable skin and she cannot drown nor suffocate. She is the culmination of a five generation breeding program, Immortis, designed to make an immortal human being.

Pia lives in Little Cam, a research compound in the middle of the rainforest, with her mother and a group of other scientists whom she addresses as Uncle and Aunt. The head scientist is Dr. Paolo Alvez whom Pia calls Uncle Paolo. There are many other researchers present as well, all of whom Pia calls aunt or uncle. There is Uncle Antonio - her favourite, and also the one who is responsible for her education, Uncle Will a quiet, gentle man who is Pia's father, and Uncle Timothy who deals with supplies. Her mother, Sylvia, also a research scientist, lives with Pia in a little house on the western side of Little Cam. Pia's bedroom is unusual in that it has three walls and a ceiling made of glass. The newest member, Dr. Harriet Fielding whom Pia at first dislikes, becomes an ally.

At this point all Pia knows is that Immortis scientists used the elysia flower and some unknown catalyst to make her immortal. But she doesn't yet know what that catalyst is and she's desperate to find out. 

In 1902, scientists searching for new medicinal plants from the rainforest heard about a plant that could extend the human life span. Dr. Heinrich Falk who was in charge of the expedition located the plant; Epidendrum elysia, which cannot be grown or replanted. The plants living in the Falk's Glen now are the same ones he discovered years ago. Falk's successor Wickham established Little Cambridge Research Station and developed the Wickham tests to assess new scientists joining the project. The group experimented on rats first. Pia has been told that the nectar from elysia was combined with that of another flower to make it safe to inject into animals. It is this other flower that Pia believes is the catalyst for Immortis. When scientists injected rats with Immortis, nothing happened until the 5th generation. The immortality gene in the elysia was assimilated into the rat's genetic code making one rat named Roosevelt immortal. Dr. Falk then began experiments on humans, bringing thirty-two humans to Little Cam and injecting them with Immortis. Each generation had children and Pia is the product of that breeding program.

In order to become part of the Immortis research team, Pia is being rigorously trained and must undergo a series of tests, named Wickham tests. These tests are designed to increasingly test her ability to function rationally and without emotion in stressful and disturbing situations. Pia is beginning to become unnerved by the tests however, as they seem to be requiring increasing cruelty and emotional detachment.

Despite Pia's intensive scientific education, she knows little about the outside world. For thirty years no books, magazines or movies from the outside world have been allowed into Little Cam. Her textbooks are redacted. Only instrumental music is allowed. This is all because of some mysterious  "Accident" which occurred thirty years ago. When recently arrived Aunt Harriet mentions the city of Manaus, Pia's curiosity gets the better of her. She tries asking Uncle Paolo but he refuses to tell her anything. Later on Harriet mentions San Francisco and Pia becomes aware of how little she knows about the outside world. On the night she turns seventeen, Pia is secretly given a map of the world by Aunt Harriet. From this map Pia learns where she lives (Brazil and the Amazon rain forest) and begins to understand just how big the outside world is.

Coincidentally, that night she also discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds Little Cam. Pia decides to take advantage of this to sneak out into the jungle. On her first trip outside the compound, Pia meets Eio, a member of the Ai'oa tribe that lives in the Amazon jungle. Attracted to one another, Eio and Pia become friends and try to understand the different worlds they live in. Pia learns that Eio knows about elysia which his people call yresa. She also discovers that Eio's "Papi" is someone from Little Cam and that the Ai'oans believe that Little Cam is a place of evil. At first Pia thinks that this is because they do not understand the important work that the scientists are doing at the research station.

Pia wants to return to the jungle to see Eio, but she feels intense conflict. For one thing, her feelings for Eio are unscientific and make her feel wild and out of control. They are unlike anything she has ever felt but she likes the way she feels when she is with Eio. This is the opposite of the way she has been raised which is to use reason and to approach everything in a rational way, without much feeling. She also struggles with issues of loyalty. She is forbidden to leave Little Cam by Uncle Paolo, the man who created her, yet she wants to see Eio and she wants to learn more about the world at large. At first the choice seems easy, to follow Uncle Paolo, but soon Pia discovers that much at Little Cam is not as it seems, that she has been lied to and deliberately manipulated.

The situation at Little Cam slowly begins to unravel. Harriet and Pia discover that part of the compound which is suppose to have burned down, was in fact a torture chamber, leading to more questions about what really happened thirty years ago. When it is discovered that Pia has been outside the jungle her home becomes a prison, just as Eio tried to tell her.  Eventually Pia learns how she was made immortal, her connection to the Ai'oan tribe and the great evil being done at Little Cami. She must now make a choice, continuing making more immortal people like herself and perpetuating the evil of Little Cami or refuse to participate and end it. Her choices make for a suspenseful but open ended conclusion to the novel.

Discussion

Origin is the story of a genetically enhanced girl named Pia, who has been created via a special breeding program. The story is told by Pia as she learns about herself and struggles to make sense of her world and her existence. 

Jessica Khoury has crafted unique characters, who are realistic and develop as the story moves along. Pia is naïve and tends to think well of others but her curiosity and intelligence allow her to quickly learn what is happening and to see that those she thought were concerned about her have very different goals in mind. Despite being taught to consider the world around her with cold rationale, her humanity is very evident.  Eio is faithful to her and helps Pia understand what she is a part of. He warns Pia, whom he refers to as his "Pia bird", not to return to her cage as Dr. Paola Alvez is a megalomaniac, bent on seeing his project to its daring ending.

The main focus of the novel is the development of the internal conflict Pia experiences as she learns more about the Ai'oan people and the experiments which led to her creation. She is horrified that her creation came about through the innocent death of so many people. Pia wants to live on her terms and questions whether the price of immortality is worth it. For "Uncle" Paola, immortality is all that matters. For Pia, some things are simply wrong and the end does not justify the means.

There are many interesting questions that Origin raises, especially in an era when scientists have the ability to genetically manipulate crops and animals. Many scientists continue to work towards the goal of cloning and also to lengthening human life span, with the belief and assurance that these are noble goals benefiting mankind.  But this research is not without controversy. What is the cost to human beings on a personal level and what is the cost to society of such manipulation? Is how we view the human body important to these questions? And what are the effects on the ecological systems of our planet as we manipulate life without understanding the full effect of what we are doing?

Origin, the first novel in a series, offers young readers the opportunity to consider such questions while enjoying a well-written science fiction novel.

Book Details:
Origin by Jessica Khoury
Toronto: RazorBill an imprint of Penquin Group Inc. (USA)
394 pp.